


[PODFIC AVAILABLE] Like a Thousand Exploding Suns

by baeconandeggs, Luciferland, winter__child (Park_Noodle)



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: BAE2017, Drug Withdrawal, Dubious Consent, Language, M/M, Morally Ambiguous Character(s), Non-Consensual Drug Use, Panic Attacks, Podfic, Podfic Available, Podfic Length: 3-3.5 Hours, Sexual Content, Violence, brief OC prostitution, multiple minor-character deaths
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-24
Updated: 2018-01-22
Packaged: 2018-11-04 06:03:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 28,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10984893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/baeconandeggs/pseuds/baeconandeggs, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luciferland/pseuds/Luciferland, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Park_Noodle/pseuds/winter__child
Summary: On Temporary Space Station 056, where there is a fake god, a blindly faithful people and every supply is running short, the only resource left is hope.--A science-fiction AU.[2018.01.19] PODFIC AVAILABLE





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> [2018.01.19 EDIT] A PODFIC OF THIS WORK IS NOW AVAILABLE  
> You can find it here: <http://www.mediafire.com/file/3wsabl9e84x10iq/%5BPodfic%5D_Like_a_Thousand_Exploding_Suns_by_Winter__Child.rar>  
>   
> Thanks to the wonderful Lucy (Luciferland) who read it out and recorded it, it is now possible to LISTEN to an EXO fic, and I couldn't be more grateful.  
> Please give her lots of love in the comment section below.  
>   
> /!\ WARNINGS /!\ This is NSFW! Parts 00 and 03 are rated NC-17 for sex and all other parts contain strong language. Listen at your own discretion.  
>   
> Prompt#: 90  
> Author: Winter__Child  
> Warning(s):language, non-consensual drug use, drug withdrawal side effects, panic attacks, dubious consent, morally ambiguous character(s), violence, multiple minor-character deaths, sexual content, brief OC prostitution  
> Disclaimer: The celebrities' names/images are merely borrowed and do not represent who the celebrities are in real life. No offense is intended towards them, their families or friends. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this fictional work. No copyright infringement is intended.
> 
> Author's Note: Thanks a lot to the prompter for coming up with such a creative idea. It was both difficult and a blast to work on this project.  
> Don’t you guys be put off by the warnings. I was very careful with the tags, as I always am. The ‘dub-con’ tag is there only because there are sex workers in this story and it’s unclear whether they’re doing their job willingly or not.  
> I’d like to thank A, N, H, G and C for the help and support they provided throughout the writing of this fic, at different, but nonetheless crucial, stages.  
> A HUGE thank you to the mods who put up with me and my weird requests. You guys are the absolute best!!  
> Also, I made a playlist to listen to (preferably in order) while you read -- of course I would suggest that you do but no pressure!  
> Title credits go to Superpoze, new-wave electronic music genius. Enjoy the read.

_-[(Like A Thousand Exploding Suns Playlist)](http://baeconandeggs.livejournal.com/61034.html) -_

 

 

**PROLOGUE**

  
  
  
“You’re not expecting me to eat this, are you?” Chanyeol yelled at the maid bringing him his meal on a shiny tray. The small woman lowered her head in silent apology.  
  
Exasperated beyond reason, Chanyeol slapped the tray off of her hands and sent it flying across the room. It crashed so noisily that the metallic racket echoing off the naked walls made Chanyeol’s headache spike up a notch. The greyish, soggy broth that he was supposed to eat for dinner was now spread, inedible, on the floor near his four-poster bed under three neat pieces of broken ceramic which used to be a bowl, not completely unlike a puddle of vomit.  
  
“Would you eat that?” Chanyeol asked the servant.  
  
She flinched for being addressed directly but did not answer. Instead, she ducked her head even lower.  
  
“WOULD YOU?” Chanyeol repeated, now nearly screaming. The maid bowed several times -- jerky, nervous, automatic gestures. Still, she did not respond -- she was not allowed to. Chanyeol huffed in annoyance, “Clean up and bring me something that is suitable for a lord,” he ordered. “HURRY!” he shouted before flopping down on his bed, and ignoring her.  
  
Chanyeol’s headache was not receding. He had been having migraines for as long as he could remember, but unfortunately, this was not something one could get used to. Especially lately, they had been worse than ever. He lay on the soft sheets for a long time after the maid had scurried out of the room with the tray and broken dishes; he would probably have fallen asleep if it were not for the pounding headache keeping him painfully awake. He called for the lights to be turned down to a dimmer glow -- and still, every lamp seemed to be casting a glare so strong that he needed to keep his eyes shut.  
  
After some time -- a few minutes, an hour, he did not know -- there was a soft knock on the door. Chanyeol groaned but did not answer. He rolled on the bed until he reached a sitting position, legs dangling over the edge. Another servant entered -- his name was Yixing, Chanyeol remembered. He tolerated that one.  
  
“You need to eat, Your Lordship,” the man said without preamble. He was of higher rank than the maid, meaning that he was allowed to speak to Chanyeol.  
  
“What is this?” Chanyeol asked, eyeing the tray suspiciously.  
  
“Soup and protein bar, my Lord.”  
  
“Where is the meat?” Chanyeol felt his voice raise, despite the agony it was causing inside his skull. “I want meat!”  
  
Yixing bowed his head. “I’m sorry, my Lord. I’m afraid there is no meat anymore.”  
  
Chanyeol was in way too much pain to try and argue something like that. He would have to speak to the High Priestess directly about this issue. “Put it there and leave,” he said, nodding up towards a three-legged pedestal table next to the bed.  
  
“Very well, my Lord. The High Priestess requests that you inform her when you finish your dinner.”  
  
Chanyeol hummed noncommittally, dismissing Yixing with a lazy wave of his hand.  
  
“Have a good night, Your Lordship.”  
  
Chanyeol dragged the table to the side of the bed and inspected his meagre dinner. In better times, there used to be fresh foods in his meals -- meat, fruit, eggs. Chanyeol was upset and irritated but he forced down a few mouthfuls of soup, knowing he always felt better after having eaten. The protein bar was rubbery and tasteless but it was useful to calm down the hunger Chanyeol had not even noticed he was in.  
  
After telling the intercom he had eaten his meal, Chanyeol shed his plain white clothes down to his undergarments and slid under the cool sheets. He tossed and turned for several minutes, thinking of the utter annoyance a shortage of food would imply. Chanyeol was not ready to trade his meat and fruit against bland, processed substitutes.  
  
Perhaps that was the reason why the people had been growing restless, these days.  
  
Today, as every Sunday, he had made his appearance from the Temple’s highest balcony, his face broadcasted live on every screen on the Station. The people had cheered, as usual. They had said the Prayer, guided by the High Priestess, Chanyeol had blessed them with his power and they had knelt in devotion. But the sacrament had been disturbed by a small group of people, screaming and shouldering their way through the crowd to reach the Temple. From his spot, Chanyeol was too far to hear their grievances, and two Guards had taken him back inside earlier than planned. The windows to the balcony had been shut and blinded right away, cutting the ceremony short. Chanyeol had been sent back to his quarters with no further knowledge concerning the incident.  
  
He tried to reflect on that as well, but having spent his whole afternoon cooped up and idle in the master bedroom had made his mind hazy and his body numb.  
  
Grouchy and unable to sleep, Chanyeol called for the one and only distraction which he knew would tire him enough to just pass out from exhaustion.  
  
“Send a comfort person,” he ordered.  
  
“Male or female, my Lord?” asked a voice from the speaker above his head.  
  
Chanyeol thought for a second.  
  
“A woman will do.” _Easier and less messy_ , he did not add.  
  
“Very well, my Lord.”  
  
The woman in question was fair-skinned and dark-haired, petite with a slight built, narrow hips and a flat chest. Chanyeol could not tell if she was pretty, for she was wearing a light veil concealing her eyes. The thin, silky robes covering her body, however, left little to the imagination.  
  
“Clothes,” Chanyeol said impassibly. “Off.”  
  
She bowed once and obeyed. She stayed there, standing in front of Chanyeol in the nude, except for her veil, waiting for further instructions.  
  
Chanyeol stood up from the bed and took off his underwear. His member was not interested in the least, hanging limply between his thighs.  
  
“Your mouth,” he told her, sitting down on the edge of the bed again. “Use it.”  
  
She did.  
  
She was not awful, but she was not particularly good either. At least, not to Chanyeol. His length twitched occasionally, barely responding to the woman’s ministrations. Chanyeol knew at once that she would never be able to bring him off like this. He pulled her off by the hair, a little bit roughly, but she did not flinch.  
  
“On the bed,” he ordered. “Hands and knees.”  
  
She complied, Chanyeol stroked himself until he reached a semblance of hardness and used her from behind.  
  
She took him with no resistance; slick, passive and mostly silent save for the odd, quiet gasp. Chanyeol was at it for at least a half hour -- his thighs were burning with exertion but his shaft refused to remain even half hard. He realised he would not finish in these circumstances.  
  
He pulled out suddenly, without any warning. The woman turned her head towards Chanyeol but did not move.  
  
“Get your clothes and go. You’re dismissed.”  
  
She bowed and did as she was told, leaving Chanyeol exhausted but deeply unsatisfied. His original purpose had been reached, however, since he was tired enough to fall into a deep and dreamless sleep.  
  
\--  
  
Chanyeol was shaken awake by one of his private Guards the next morning.  
  
“Uh?” He blinked several times, trying to accommodate to the light. The headache was back with full force, so he reached out for the glass of water that was unmistakably resting on his bedside table every morning. His hand grasped nothing but air. He frowned, confused, and looked at the empty wooden surface.  
  
“Where is my water? Don’t tell me there’s a shortage of it too?”  
  
His Guard’s expression was unreadable; he was wearing the uniform helmet with a dark visor, and his thin-lipped mouth betrayed nothing of the urgency with which Chanyeol had been awakened.  
  
“You must go out today, Your Lordship,” the Guard said, overlooking Chanyeol’s question.  
  
Chanyeol’s frown deepened, “What? Why?”  
  
“You must soothe the people, my Lord.” The Guard paused, looking at the closed door, “The High Priestess couldn’t do anything.”  
  
“What happened?”  
  
“Incidents broke out in several districts of the city last night, my Lord. Food stores were robbed and a water pump was broken.”  
  
“Did the Militia stop them?”  
  
“Some of them were caught, my Lord, but not all.”  
  
“Why do I have to go out? Wasn’t the High Priestess reassuring enough?”  
  
“They don’t need a priestess, my Lord,” the Guard turned his attention to Chanyeol. He was sure that he was looking directly at his eyes through the visor and did not like this kind of insubordination. “They need a _god_.”  
  
Chanyeol squinted up at the Guard, trying to see through the dark, shiny glass. “Who are you?” Chanyeol asked, “I’m sure I’ve never heard your voice before.” He would have remembered the slightly raspy quality of it.  
  
“I have just joined the Guard. My wish is to always protect you.” There was a trace of something akin to slyness in his voice, something that settled, heavy and dangerous, deep in the pit of Chanyeol’s stomach. “My Lord,” the Guard added, as if it were just an afterthought and not a great mark of disrespect towards Chanyeol.  
  
“What’s your name, Guard?” Chanyeol asked again, his interest piqued in a way it had not been in months.  
  
The migraine came back suddenly, pinning Chanyeol to the bed. He took his head in his hands and cried out, startled by the pain.  
  
The bedroom door slid open and a flock of Guards and a Physician scurried in. The Guards scattered around the room instantly, securing it, and Chanyeol, his vision obscured by a red curtain of pain, lost sight of the cryptic, unnamed Guard.  
  
The Physician gave Chanyeol a pill and a glass of water, which immediately softened the edge of his headache. He waited a few more minutes, eyes closed, for the pain to become the usual, dull ache that had been his everyday companion for so many years that he had lost count.  
  
When he opened his eyes again, he sat up, back straight and shoulders pulled backwards, ready to confront whatever hardships his people were going to throw at his face.  
  
Less than an hour later, he found himself wearing his formal outfit in the Lordo-craft -- a small, round-ish, bulletproof-glass hovering vehicle that he used for his rare outings into the depths of the city. His path was cleared by the Militia and heavily guarded, but it did not prevent the crowd from massing together around him, shouting and cheering and grinning and weeping as Chanyeol passed by.  
  
Chanyeol visited every victim of the night’s attacks, even leaving the safe confines of the Lordo-craft to be in direct contact with the people, touching their foreheads in blessing, murmuring quiet, reassuring words. It took him almost the whole day, but he did not realise it until the Dome’s lights were switched off to Night Mode.  
  
In the Lordo-craft on his way back to the Temple, Chanyeol let himself look up. He had always been fascinated by the city at night, and his fascination was especially great because he could not witness it often. Once, maybe twice every year. His face was everywhere, on every screen or animated advertising board in sight. The latest events were placated all over the place -- “His Lordship goes down to the city to bless His people”, “Thank You, Your Lordship, for Your endless mercy”, short clips and holograms of him in the robbed stores talking to the people adorned every tall building available.  
  
The Lordo-craft took more altitude as it reached Temple Square. It was absolutely packed, bristling with life and cheers; screams of adoration seemed to be lifting the hovercraft above the crowd by the sheer force of their voices. Chanyeol waved at them, smiling gently, the lower part of his body numb from sitting for so long, and the rest of it taken over by a strange, prickling sensation of pins and needles.  
  
Once in the Temple again, Chanyeol reached the highest balcony and delivered the reassuring speech that the High Priestess had written for him. He had not even read it beforehand, blindly putting all of his trust in the woman who had brought him to the status of deity.  
  
At last, he lifted his right hand and a general hush spread through the crowd. It was soon so silent that Chanyeol could hear his own heart pounding in his ribcage. Just as the migraine resurfaced behind his forehead, a small flame burst from his palm, sparkling and flickering for a few, suspended seconds, before growing bigger steadily, until a great column of twirling fire expanded itself from Chanyeol’s hand and rose as high as it could, reaching the top of the Temple effortlessly.  
  
The people erupted in cheers, and Chanyeol knew, as he was waving at them with fake benevolent ease, that they would calm down.  
  
At least, for the moment.  
  
\--  


 

**-I-**

  
  
  
The Exodus from Earth had started more than a century before Chanyeol was born, and yet, the only glimpses he had ever had of the allegedly wonderful and amazing planets the Pioneers had settled on, had been through school holograms or slideshows. And even then, he had not seen a lot.  
  
He understood, now, why his private tutors had been so reluctant to show him images of El Dorado and Black Pearl, the two exoplanets that had been colonised by the Pioneers. He understood that they did not want to make him hope too much, because the only sun he would ever see, the only ground he would ever tread upon, the only air he would ever breathe -- were artificial, less-than-perfect replicas of their Earth versions.  
  
As far as Chanyeol was concerned, life on Temporary Space Station 056, also called Sacred Fire, was not that bad. The problem was that it was the exact opposite of what it was supposed to be at the beginning: temporary. Chanyeol’s ancestors from Earth, as well as those of the other two million inhabitants of TSS-056, were not meant to live there indefinitely, stuck in orbit of Alpha Centauri C, for generations on end.  
  
Hundreds of Temporary Space Stations had been created to be resupply points of call and maintenance stopovers for the Pioneer ships along their journey. No one was ever supposed to stay on a TSS more than a week. However, that was exactly what happened on Sacred Fire.  
  
After the first two waves of planet colonisation, money started to run short on Earth. Halfway through a journey in the early 2120’s, it was made obvious that the trip to Black Pearl would be impossible in such conditions. The Pioneer ships were unloaded on TSS-056, and instead of pursuing the initial plan, they were sent back to Earth empty, with the promise of coming back _one month_ later with enough fuel and supplies for the colonists to make it through their space travel. But one month turned into two, then into six, then into a year. After two years of waiting, people on TSS-056 started to acknowledge that there would be no returning to Earth anytime soon, and even less travelling forward to Black Pearl.  
  
Temporary Space Stations, despite their purpose of being just that, _temporary_ , were also made for this kind of incidents. They had been designed as spheres with a flat disk cutting them in half, parting them into two Domes. The Upper Dome was meant to be able to sustain the population of a medium city proportions, with enough arranged soils, ready-to-use greenhouses, laboratories and hospitals. Housing was also available, and could be vertically expanded if needed. The Lower Dome was only built for technical purposes such as hosting the machine room, stocking supplies and waste before it was released into space.  
  
Little did the colonists know that they would start their own, brand new society on a Temporary Space Station that was temporary only by name, for it was like time had been frozen when the Pioneer ships went off and back to Earth, and it became their very world. Ironically enough, they were called Temps, even after several generations of growth and settled life.  
  
Now, in 2217, it had been two years since the Station had exceeded its virtual maximum capacity. People lived on top of one another in small, cramped apartments in tall towers. Waste had to be released into space twice a day instead of the normal once a week. Crops were too small to grow enough cereal and labs were not fast enough to synthesise much-needed proteins in sufficient amounts.  
  
As a desperate move, contraceptives had been released into drinkable water directly at the pumps, and women were now unable to bear children, which would eventually make the population drop back to sustainable levels by ‘natural’ means. The last children born on TSS-056 were now toddlers and the symbol of the Temps’ failure.  
  
In other words, the people of Temporary Space Station 056 were doomed.  
  
Unless a miracle happened.  
  
And this was where Chanyeol’s part in this fool's game took on its full meaning.  
  
\--  
  
In dark times, people need a leader. They need a figure that they can rely on, that they can trust with their lives.  
  
This was how Chanyeol was born and raised as a god within the confines of the Clergy headquarters, made his first public appearance at the age of eleven and from then on, became the figurehead of a cult of great proportions -- the Fire Lord to guide them all, protect them all and promise them all that Earth had not forgotten them.  
  
After the first incidents and Chanyeol’s intervention, life went back to some kind of normalcy. At least, as normal as a life without enough food and water could be. But just as previous generations did before them, the people adapted to the situation and behaved, as long as Chanyeol showed his face on the Temple’s balcony on regular occasions. On the other days, videos and holograms of him were looped on every display available.  
  
Chanyeol’s days had been mostly the same old routine ever since he was introduced as a god to the people. Waking up, having breakfast then mild exercise, shooting a hologram film, having lunch, spending some alone time in the Temple’s Inner Gardens, taking care of paperwork -- did a god really have to do that? -- then having dinner and if it was not too late, tending to his flowers until Night Mode was switched on. On Sunday mornings he would show himself on the balcony for mass on Temple Square and retire for free time after that.  
  
Lately, however, things had started to become slightly different. Chanyeol’s timetable seemed more off with every passing day. His headache was now hardly bearable in the mornings, he felt like his senses had grown sharper, the pain more acute, the fake glare of the Day Mode sky brighter and the edges of objects and furniture in his surroundings more defined and oppressive. Even his precious daily strolls in the Gardens nearly drove him sick, the artificial flowery-sweet smells overwhelming him, making him dizzy. His headache would eventually leave him nauseous and exhausted to the point that he went straight to bed after dinner every other day.  
  
In the daze of his seemingly unending ache, Chanyeol still noticed that the whereabouts of the mysterious Guard -- the one who had woken him up on the day of his recent outing -- were strange, to say the least. He was not around all the time, but when he was, Chanyeol found himself throwing constant glances at him, seeking him in the bedroom first thing in the morning. After a few days, Chanyeol found out that he had no regular pattern to his work schedule and thought briefly of asking the High Priestess about him. But he decided against it for fear of having her take the Guard off of his duty altogether if he did. The High Priestess’ reactions were so unpredictable that Chanyeol preferred keeping his interrogations to himself.  
  
\--  
  
Chanyeol’s guidance and blessings had never been doubted so far (except the one time), so it came as a surprise when, barely two weeks after the first incidents, heists started breaking out every other day, rogue groups of people marched the streets and shouted through speakers, throwing bricks at shop windows; water-pumps were hijacked and grain silos were drained. The Militia became outnumbered soon, and if it were not for Chanyeol, chaos would have taken over the city.  
  
The only thing that remained untarnished was the people’s faith in their Lord. However, it meant that Chanyeol now had to make appearances every day, showing off his fire abilities in numerous, always more impressive ways, just to keep things in order -- and yet only just on the brink of falling apart completely.  
  
One night, against his better judgment, Chanyeol went down to the Inner Gardens. Even though his headache was stronger than ever and clouding his mind, he needed the peace and quiet of the mostly deserted Gardens. If they were not odourless, flowers were at least silent, offering Chanyeol a rare opportunity to escape the constant bustle of the Temple’s corridors.  
  
He sat quietly for a long time, thinking of nothing in particular, sometimes catching a louder noise from the distant, endless murmur of the city beyond the high walls. Sighing wistfully, he caressed the soft petal of a withering poppy by his feet, its red fading into dusty pink where it was dying slowly. If Chanyeol did not take care of the flowers, there was no one to do it in his place.  
  
“Red is such a beautiful colour,” he heard the High Priestess say from behind him, and he tried not to flinch at the interruption. Chanyeol hummed without turning around, as proper manners would have requested. “Power,” she added with a small chuckle. The thin petal Chanyeol had been touching fell off, ending its short course next to his right foot -- he stepped on it. “That’s what it makes me think of -- after your hair, of course.”  
  
“ _Passion_ ,” Chanyeol said, later. “Even though I’ve never felt it myself, passion is often associated with the colour red, in books.” The High Priestess said nothing, but she walked around the bench and sat down next to him. “And danger, too,” he added softly, like an afterthought. He straightened his back, looking around himself for the first time in several minutes. He caught sight of the Guard almost immediately. He was standing next to the farthest wall, his posture a professional one, radiating strength and confidence.  
  
His train of thought drifted from the odd conversation with the High Priestess to the riots happening outside. It had been bothering him for a few days now, and he needed it off of his chest.  
  
“I have to go out, tomorrow,” he said, still looking straight ahead at the Guard. He was too far to hear anything, and yet, it might have been a trick of the light, but Chanyeol was positive he saw him tense up at his words. This couldn’t be happening, he thought then, shaking his head imperceptibly; there was no way the Guard was listening in from this distance.  
  
A light touch on his forearm shook him out of his thoughts. He glanced at the High Priestess’ eyes, two bright, black beads that were as undecipherable as they were familiar. Her gaze had always put him off, so he looked away, taking another flower by the stem and turning it between index and thumb. “Sometimes, we have to do things that we do not want to do, for the greater good,” she said, patting him gently -- a strange gesture, as it was, for she had never been particularly affectionate in the past.  
  
Did he not, though? Did he really _not_ want to go out? Chanyeol did not know anything anymore. He used to feel perfectly fine with living inside the Clergy headquarters, and not mingling with the crowd. But it was different now, nothing like he had ever felt before. He dreamt of the city more often than not, of its shady districts, its dirty alleys, and the fake impression it gave of being immense and borderless. _’The sky's the limit’_ , as Chanyeol had read in books -- but the Temple’s walls were his very own limits, and he found himself wishing that it were the Upper Dome, for lack of anything better.  
  
It was strange, feeling trapped in the very place where he had spent his whole life and which he knew like the back of his hand. But his never-ending headache had put him in a state where he felt too big for his own body, where he needed to run, to flee. Escape from what? He did not know. He was sure of something, though: if he ever ran away, he would not go very far. For the first time, Chanyeol experienced the oppression of the reality that he lived in -- a confined, isolated world where humanity was running towards its extinction, sentenced to disappear amidst general indifference.  
  
“Guards!” the High Priestess shouted, though it sounded muffled to Chanyeol’s ears, as if he were wrapped up in a thick layer of gauze. “Take him to his room and call a Physician.”  
  
The next thing he knew, he was being lifted on a stretcher and the Guard was hovering over him, his dark visor still concealing the upper half of his face. Chanyeol reached out for the High Priestess but she was walking ahead and did not pay attention. He had been hyperventilating, and the simple fact of uttering words seemed as strenuous as running a ten-mile track.  
  
“I--I _need_ to...go out,” he said faintly, doubting anyone had been able to hear him.  
  
There was a slight pressure on his wrist, and Chanyeol looked down. The Guard was holding him gently -- his hand warm and strangely soft. For a moment, Chanyeol was transfixed by the beauty of his long and delicate digits -- not the kind of fingers one would imagine on a member of the Holy Watch. He had the hands of a pianist, of a painter, of an artist. There was a tiny mole right under his thumb nail, and the sight of it was so incongruous in the midst of Chanyeol’s panic attack that he almost believed it was just his imagination. The Guard’s grip became stronger, then, and Chanyeol knew it was real.  
  
“You will,” the Guard whispered so that only Chanyeol could hear him. “I’ll make sure you do.”  
  
After that, the Guard nodded when he was ordered something and went away, leaving Chanyeol with a blinding headache and constricted lungs. He passed out not long after, hoping with his last slivers of consciousness that it was _actually_ not just a dream.  
  
\--  
  
Chanyeol woke up the next morning feeling marginally better, but still well enough to crawl out of bed on his own, wash and dress up. He did not see the Guard during his morning routine, but then again, it did not surprise him anymore. Realistically, he knew _nothing_ about the man, but the firmness with which he had told Chanyeol he would take him out of there had ignited something in him, a will to take a risk for once in his life, to change things for the better.  
  
It was not until much later that day that Chanyeol could go outside. Finally sitting in his Lordo-craft, he felt like it was the first time that he could breathe freely -- which was paradoxical, judging by the narrowness of the passenger compartment. When he left the Temple hangar, surrounded by Guards on their bikrafts, Day Mode had already been switched off.  
  
Following the Guards at the front of the procession, Chanyeol flew over the crowd for a short amount of time, careful not to forget any part of Temple Square, before landing on a rather short pedestal sitting in the middle of it. The Guards stood in circle around Chanyeol, keeping people at bay, while he left the Lordo-craft carefully.  
  
Camera-drones were flying all around Chanyeol, capturing from four different angles his every movement to broadcast it in the air, ten times bigger, through a hologram hovering over the square. Even though he was used to being filmed, live broadcast was something totally new to him. He had never really said anything without the High Priestess’ approval, and he felt as lost as a small child looking for his mother.  
  
The crowd was loud, but he could still discern his title being shouted, bits of the Prayer and thanks rising up over the people. Galvanised by the cheers, Chanyeol walked forward, closer to the crowd. People standing next to the small stage were trying to reach out to him, and the Guards struggled to keep them away. But Chanyeol did not stop -- he placed himself between two Guards and, applying pressure on their shoulders with his hands, forced them apart to give him access to the edge of the pedestal. They reacted quickly, forming an efficient safety line and opening a path through adoring believers.  
  
They behaved for a few, short moments, but when one of them managed to grab Chanyeol’s wrist, they became reckless, everyone wanting a piece of the god. The initial confusion turned rapidly into chaos, people were shouting, others tried to grope their way to Chanyeol, hitting heads and arms in their haste. Chanyeol felt panic starting to squeeze his lungs, and he searched for the Guard in reflex, remembering his words from the day before and clinging to them desperately. He was nowhere in sight, however, and even if Chanyeol was taller than most people, it was nearly impossible to find somebody among the disturbance.  
  
Time seemed to freeze suddenly when a laser gun shot was heard. It was close, very much so. When people started screaming, other gunshots erupted from several corners of the square. In the span of less than one second, Chanyeol felt his body being covered by Guards, pinned to the ground in a professional move to protect him. Trying to keep his breathing to a normal rate, Chanyeol focused on the noises around him, struggling to take them apart and identify them. He listened for screams of pain, but could not tell for sure if someone had been hurt by the gunshots. There was another shot right next to him followed by a loud, metallic racket. Something had fallen down to Chanyeol’s left. He turned around, scraping his cheekbone on the not-that-smooth marble slab doing so, and realised it was one of the camera-drones. Soon after the first drone had been taken down, the three others suffered the same fate, if the additional gunshots and loud, clanging noises were any indication.  
  
Whoever created this mess did not want to be advertised.  
  
Seconds or minutes later, he could not tell at that point, Chanyeol felt himself being grabbed up off of the ground by firm hands, and before he could turn around and see who was manhandling him, he received a blow to the side of the head and blacked out.  
  
  
When he came to, the first thing that Chanyeol felt was nausea. The second was his headache, back at full force. He cracked an eye open, trying to move as little as possible and to look around inconspicuously. He was sitting in the back of a hovering van. The steel seat was cold and hard through the thin fabric of his ceremony robes. He glanced at his hands in his lap -- they were tied with magnetic restraints. He realised, just by the icy feeling on his ankles, that his feet were bound together too.  
  
He tried, for what seemed the umpteenth time that day, not to panic. He breathed slowly through his nose and focused on his fast but steady heartbeat. A swift glance to his right told him that he was not alone in the van. Other people, dressed for combat, wearing black bulletproof vests and helmets, also sat next to and across him. They did not seem to have noticed that Chanyeol was awake, for the turbulence was enough of a distraction in itself. Chanyeol closed his eyes again and decided to wait it out.  
  
When the vehicle came to a stop, Chanyeol was shaken out of his aching daze and opened his eyes carelessly. The people sitting with him looked at him but paid no further attention to him. The van’s back compartment looked strangely like the inside of a reconditioned Militia cruiser, and through the buzz in his head, he found the power to feel indignant of being treated like a mere convict.  
  
The van was parked and after a while, it touched the ground roughly. Chanyeol heard the driver leave the steering compartment and walk around. The back doors were flung open to reveal a man standing against the light of what looked like an underground car park. He sighed heavily and leaned against the doorframe, his head down.  
  
“We did it,” he said.  
  
Chanyeol gasped, recognizing the Guard’s voice immediately. The man straightened and turned to Chanyeol. He removed his helmet, shook his head and ran a hand through jet-black hair. Finally, Chanyeol could look at his face for the first time -- the face he had been fantasising about, the face he was so desperate to know and study. He was shocked to see that of a boy, merely a young man, probably his own age, with the most expressive and piercing eyes that he had ever had the opportunity to look straight at. The Guard’s gaze did not falter for several excruciating seconds and Chanyeol held it with as much composure as he was capable of, showing him that you could not just abduct a god and get away with it.  
  
The Guard nodded up at him and, without breaking eye-contact, ordered, “Put him to sleep.”  
  
“No!” Chanyeol yelled, but it was already too late -- the last thing he felt was a sharp sting on his right shoulder and then… nothing.  
  
\--  


 

**-II-**

  
  
  
When Chanyeol woke up again, his headache was not gone. Worse, it was probably the reason he woke up in the first place. As his senses gradually came back to his limbs, he noticed that he had been moved. He was now lying down on a thin mattress on top of a hard bed which he realised, appalled, that he was tied to with tight straps. He struggled to free himself, but the only result was his headache worsening -- the straps did not budge an inch.  
  
He looked around himself. The bed was sitting in the middle of a nearly bare room. There was a metal chest of drawers in a corner, a shower stall in another and a toilet-sink combo. The only link to the outside was a sturdy-looking metal door with a small window in it, but Chanyeol could not see anything from his spot.  
  
He struggled again, but the bed was as heavy as it was hard and it did not move, not even a little. Chanyeol started yelling, shouting nonsense as loud as he could just to get someone’s attention and to be released from what he assumed without the shadow of a doubt was a prison cell.  
  
Chanyeol realised after having screamed his lungs out for several minutes that it was in vain. No one was coming for him. Plus, his migraine was so intense that it was as if a drill was boring a hole through the left part of his skull. His hands started shaking, soon followed by his legs. His whole body was convulsing, straining against the straps, making them cut through his skin and constrict his lungs. His breathing went quicker, shallower, until he choked with both pain and sheer lack of air.  
  
He had time to hear the door open and people rush in right before fainting, having exhausted his body across limits it had never breached in the past.  
  
\--  
  
“He’s waking up,” Chanyeol heard someone say, to his right. His body was numb, to say the least -- he could neither feel his hands nor his feet, and his headache was non-existent, which had not been the case in several months now.  
  
He was still in the bed, but the restraints were not there anymore. Instead, an IV drip was hooked to the inside of his elbow, releasing some drug directly into his veins. Whatever it was, it had to be quite powerful, since Chanyeol had almost no sensation left at all, and the slightest movement required ten times more effort than usual.  
  
Through his partially blurry vision, he could make out three people in the room. Two white coats were next to his bed, one typing something on a holo-tab and the other checking the level of Chanyeol’s IV. The third one was standing by the door, arms crossed and stance rigid. It was the Guard, Chanyeol could at least recognise him from the way he was positioned -- he had his fair share of _casual_ observation back at the Temple.  
  
“How is he?” the Guard asked firmly.  
  
“Vitals are okay,” one of the white coats said, shutting off the tablet. “But he’s weak and needs complete withdrawal before you think of making him do anything.”  
  
“How long?”  
  
“Since the process started two months ago, I’d say just over a week. Two tops.”  
  
“What can he do in the meantime?” the Guard pressed.  
  
“As I told you, nothing. He must rest,” the doctor sounded slightly irritated, but did not argue any further.  
  
Chanyeol wanted to say something, wanted to ask where he was and why he was there but the only sound that left his mouth was mumbled nonsense.  
  
“Well, when can he eat solid food?”  
  
“Tomorrow should be good. Now go, you have no business here. And you make him nervous, his heart rate is skyrocketing.”  
  
“Fine,” the Guard yielded. “But I need him on his feet as soon as possible.”  
  
“Go!” the doctor repeated, sounding annoyed and fond at the same time.  
  
The Guard grumbled and went out, closing the door behind him.  
  
The doctor picked the tablet from a trolley next to the bed and nodded up at the other white coat. The latter turned the small tap under the IV bag and inserted a needle in another tap in the catheter next to Chanyeol’s elbow. _Yet another drug_ , Chanyeol thought, feeling utterly powerless but extremely angry.  
  
“Go to sleep, Lordy, you’ll need it.”  
  
It was the first time he was talked to directly, but even entertaining the idea of answering was out of the question, for he was physically unable to speak. He tried to communicate with his eyes, hoping his ire and frustration would transpire from his gaze, but the doctors’ attention had already fallen back elsewhere. Chanyeol did not have time to lament it, however, because he fell asleep seconds later.  
  
\--  
  
The next time he was awake, Chanyeol felt the exact opposite of his previous state of consciousness. He was aching all over, and had more energy than he had ever had in weeks. He shot out of the bed, noticing with relief that he was not tied to it. He pulled the IV off of his skin, barely acknowledging the pain of the needle and plaster tearing his skin off. He ran to the door and banged on it.  
  
“Let me out! LET ME OUT OF HERE!” he shouted, hitting the icy steel until his fists hurt so badly that he had to quit. His knuckles were red and skinned on some spots. Everything stung, there was a loud buzz in his head and he was shivering, feeling the cold air of the room on his skin. He was only wearing underwear and his feet were freezing on the tiled floor. But he refused to go back to bed, for fear of falling asleep and be at their mercy again.  
  
He continued hitting the door with the flat of his hand, screaming at the top of his lungs for someone, needing answers more than warmth, more than easing his pain, more than anything else.  
  
“Please!” he shouted before sliding down against the door and curling up on himself.  
  
Suddenly, doctors burst into the room and grabbed Chanyeol unceremoniously. He struggled, but there were four of them so it was fruitless. They pinned him to the bed and tied his wrists and ankles with straps.  
  
“What are you doing?” Chanyeol yelled. “Get off of me! Let go!”  
  
Unfazed, the doctors started putting several instruments on the medical trolley. When Chanyeol saw them -- scalpel, syringe, sharp scissors -- he screamed even louder, horrified.  
  
“LET ME GO!”  
  
But they kept busy with the instruments and, as Chanyeol was trying in vain to wrestle free of his bounds, settled for buckling another strap around his middle.  
  
One of the doctors brought a transparent gas mask to Chanyeol’s face and covered his mouth and nose with it.  
  
“On the count of three. One… two… three…”  
  
But Chanyeol did not fall asleep, he remained perfectly conscious and equally terrified. The doctor to his right lifted his hand, palm up, and another put the scalpel in it. As it moved closer, the sharp blade reflected the light and temporarily blinded Chanyeol. The next thing he knew, something cold and spiky grazed the bare skin of his chest.  
  
He screamed.  
  
\--  
  
“He’s burning up!” someone said alarmingly.  
  
Chanyeol came to again, on the floor next to the door, uncomfortable and freezing, his cheek soaking in his own vomit. Someone helped him up and dragged him to the shower. He was too weak to resist, so he let himself be undressed and placed under a jet of lukewarm water. When he had regained full consciousness, he rinsed away the acrid taste of bile from his mouth and trudged out of the shower stall. The same two doctors as the ones from his first day in prison were waiting for him, the shorter of the two with a towel. Once he was dry and dressed in a robe, Chanyeol was led to the bed where he hauled himself up and sat down. The taller doctor scanned his forehead and nodded.  
  
“He’s having a fever,” he said, speaking to the other doctor. “I think he might even have had hallucinations.”  
  
“That’s perfectly normal, Sehun, he’s going through withdrawal. Give him the pills.”  
  
“Hey,” Chanyeol said weakly, waving at the doctor in front of him. “I’m right here. Stop talking about me like I’m not in the room.”  
  
“Take your pills,” the doctor, _Sehun_ repeated. He handed them to Chanyeol, who slapped his hand away and the tablets bounced on the floor before rolling out of sight.  
  
“Where am I? Who are you?” he asked angrily.  
  
“You’ll know,” the shorter doctor replied from the other end of the room, where he was arranging a series of pill jars on the chest of drawers next to a bottle of water and a glass.  
  
Chanyeol jumped off of the bed and marched towards him. He grabbed his elbow and forced him to turn around and face him. The doctor could not hide his surprise, his eyes looking abnormally wide for a moment.  
  
“Tell me. NOW!”  
  
“Listen, _my Lord_ ,” he said, voice dripping with sarcasm and looking him straight in the eye. “Here, you’re not to order anyone around. Better get used to it.”  
  
“What the--”  
  
“Kyungsoo, can’t we at least tell him where he is?”  
  
“Shut up!” the one named Kyungsoo retorted harshly. “It’s too early. He’ll know, but he’s not ready.”  
  
“When will he be?” Sehun answered, throwing his arms up in apparent frustration.  
  
“Are you really a doctor?” Kyungsoo snorted, rolling his eyes. “You almost sound like _him_. I thought you knew better.” He looked back at Chanyeol, who still could not help being taken aback when someone other than the High Priestess made intentional eye-contact with him. “Take your pills. Seriously.”  
  
“Screw you and your pills!” Chanyeol yelled at him.  
  
Kyungsoo merely raised his eyebrows and went back to the jars. “I’ll leave them here with instructions. It’s for your own good.”  
  
And off they went. “Oh,” Kyungsoo added from the open doorway. “I’ll send someone in to clean up this mess,” he gestured at the vomit. “Don’t try anything brash or we’ll have to put you to sleep again.”  
  
\--  
  
From then on, unwillingly but intentionally, Chanyeol started to behave. After having tried to go to sleep without taking painkillers, he realised his headache would not leave him alone, so he read the instructions left by Kyungsoo and took the pills at due times. They kept the worst of the pain at bay and contained his fever, so he never dreamed up mad doctors again, which was a minor relief in his situation.  
  
He got several daily visits. He was fed three times a day, but everything tasted bland and doughy, so he never finished his meals. The cook or whoever brought him food gave him the dirty eye but never commented on it, and even though Chanyeol was annoyed of being ignored, he did not provoke her into saying anything to him.  
  
He also got one visit a day from either Kyungsoo or Sehun to check on him, sometimes both for times when a more complete examination was needed. He complied reluctantly, not wanting to be jabbed again or administered any unnecessary additional drugs. He was under too many already.  
  
Kyungsoo and Sehun were not friendly per se, but they were at least cordial. Especially Sehun when he was on his own. He was not particularly talkative, but Chanyeol noticed he tried to be as gentle as possible when he was visiting. He truly looked like he felt bad for Chanyeol, and Chanyeol was almost grateful for it.  
  
He saw very little of the Guard. Chanyeol assumed that he was busy elsewhere and that Chanyeol was not interesting to him as long as he was ‘weak’. He would see him pass by the cell door from time to time. Once, he caught the Guard looking at him through the window.  
  
“I’m bored!” he yelled at him.  
  
The Guard looked away and left.  
  
  
“The man who drove me here, the one who was a Guard at the Temple, is he your boss?” Chanyeol asked Sehun one day, knowing that he was the most prone to give him an answer.  
  
Sehun merely hummed. Chanyeol could not tell if it was affirmative or just a dismissal. He did not ask again.  
  
The next day when he woke up, Chanyeol found a pile of vintage paper comic books next to his pills on the chest of drawers -- _Guardians of the Galaxy_ , how appropriate. He felt the smallest smile creep up his lips for the first time in forever.  
  
He fell asleep reading that night. Without the help of painkillers.  
  
\--  
  
Chanyeol underwent a battery of tests soon after, he had to run on a treadmill that was brought on wheels into the room, hooked to a machine monitoring all kinds of constants. They took his blood and urine, weighed him and gave him a series of shots. He was not even afraid of needles anymore at that point.  
  
They left him to rot in his cell alone with his books for the whole day after that. The woman did not even bring him food until bedtime. He went to sleep feeling moody and hungry but he refused to take any pill before going to bed.  
  
  
“Morning, sunshine!” Kyungsoo said dryly.  
  
Chanyeol jolted awake, rather astonished at Kyungsoo’s choice of wording. “Sunshine?”  
  
“Well, technically, you won’t see it today -- the sunshine, I mean, but you’re definitely going out of here.” Sehun clarified.  
  
Chanyeol scrambled out of bed, not believing his ears. “What? I’m going out?”  
  
Sehun cracked a half-smile. “Sure.”  
  
“Thank goodness,” Chanyeol sighed, running a hand through his long-ish hair for lack of anything better to do with himself. He wanted to erupt with relief, but he had refrained himself so much from expressing his emotions that he did not dare to. Now that he finally saw the end of his imprisonment, the last thing he wanted was to jeopardise his chances of going out.  
  
“You’re still weak, and you’ve lost a lot of weight, but you can go out with escort.” Kyungsoo said, tone professional and detached.  
  
“Who will be escorting me?” Chanyeol asked warily, wishing it was someone else than Kyungsoo.  
  
“I am,” a familiar voice replied calmly.  
  
Chanyeol turned abruptly. “Yixing?” he gasped, the sight of his former servant from the Temple taking some time to sink in properly. “Why-- What are you doing here?”  
  
Yixing smiled, looking up at Chanyeol. He had very soft eyes. “I don’t really work at the Temple. I was _undercover_ ,” he said, apparently delighted at the idea. He handed Chanyeol a grey tunic and black trousers.  
  
“You… you were part of my abduction, then?”  
  
Yixing nodded, still smiling. “Wear them. When you’re dressed, I’ll show you around the base.”  
  
“The ‘base’?”  
  
“Dress up. You’ll see.”  
  
\--  
  
When Yixing had said 'base', he was probably very close to the truth. He took Chanyeol on a private visit of what honestly looked like an army secret underground base where confidential science experiments were led on a daily basis. Yixing would not answer Chanyeol's questions, so he stopped asking them altogether, settling for just listening to what he had to say about their surroundings.  
  
Yixing led the way through a true maze of corridors. Chanyeol felt disoriented at once because there were no windows or any outside light to serve as beacons. After a while, they entered a large room where some people were having lunch, dinner, or whatever meal they were serving at this hour. Chanyeol heard his own stomach growl with interest and instantly felt ashamed of it.  
  
"We'll sit down to eat later. I want to give you the tour before, is that okay?"  
  
Chanyeol nodded and followed him.  
  
There were labs -- quite the number of them, actually. Chemistry labs, mostly, where people in white coats seemed to be working dutifully. At the end of another corridor was the hospital wing. It was more a simple ward than a hospital, but it was fully equipped. Chanyeol wondered where all the money for the machines came from, but he bit his tongue and kept his questions for another time.  
  
They passed Kyungsoo and Sehun, and the latter waved at them.  
  
"Nice to see you up and about," he said and went back to his work on a holo-tab.  
  
"And... here are the greenhouses!" Yixing said proudly when he pushed a door a little further down the corridor. "This is where I spend most of my time," he added with a grin. "We grow all kinds of cereal and vegetables. They're better than anything you've ever had at the Temple."  
  
Chanyeol could not help exclaiming his awe at the sight. There were rows upon rows of suspended plantations of tomatoes, carrots, squashes, vine, melons, and many others that Chanyeol had never seen before. It was bright and colourful, even more so than Chanyeol's beloved Inner Gardens. After having spent days in a grey cell, so many colours were a sight for sore eyes, and Chanyeol found himself caressing a vine leaf with a mix of admiration and regret.  
  
"Why did you feed me that tasteless crap when there's a mine of good vegetables and fruits here?"  
  
Yixing sighed, without losing his smile. "We couldn't give you those. You needed rehab. Now that you're all good, you'll be able to have them, but little by little."  
  
"I don't understand."  
  
"You will."  
  
"Could one of you please be less cryptic? Because I'm at a loss here!" Chanyeol felt himself heat up and anger rise up his throat. "I've been abducted and thrown into prison without any explanation, given pills for some 'rehab' of whatever, and now you tell me that you can't say anything? I've had about enough of this bullshit!"  
  
"Please, calm down," Yixing answered, putting a soothing hand on his shoulder. "I get that you're frustrated, but I can't tell you myself. I wouldn't know where to start. But I _promise_ that you'll know _everything_ when the right time comes."  
  
"It's your boss, right? The one ordering you to keep silent."  
  
"Yeah--"  
  
"Well, I want to meet him!"  
  
"That's not--"  
  
"Right now!" Chanyeol was nearly crying at that point, his face right up Yixing's personal space.  
  
"There, there!" another voice came from behind them.  
  
Chanyeol turned around abruptly. A short man with a white coat (another one!) and a friendly, catlike smile walked towards them. "What is the matter?"  
  
"Who are you?"  
  
"I'm Jongdae, I specialise in chemistry. Nice to meet you, Chanyeol."  
  
Chanyeol gulped. No one had ever called him by his name since his eleventh birthday when he was enthroned as a god. "What-- How did you call me?"  
  
"Well, Chanyeol, why? That's your name, isn't it?"  
  
"How do you know it?"  
  
"We know a lot, down here," Jongdae said. Before Chanyeol could protest again, the chemist waved at Yixing, who was tending to a seedling. "Hey, Xing, why don't you stay here while I finish showing him around?"  
  
The base was even larger than Chanyeol had imagined. There was a whole wing dedicated to technology, a control room, a surveillance room and a computer room.  
  
Jongdae pointed to a girl sitting in front of a huge holo-comp and typing away some intricate coding of sorts. "This is Seulgi," Jongdae whispered. "She's our IT genius, a total nerd. But don't get on her bad side or she'll make you pay for it for the rest of your life."  
  
"Shut up, Jongdae," the girl said from her seat without looking away from the code. "Hi, Chanyeol. Glad to know you're finally out of your cell."  
  
"Hello," Chanyeol said, a bit hesitant.  
  
"Well... you've seen pretty much everything worth seeing. Except the gym, but let's save that for after lunch."  
  
Seulgi perked up and turned towards them. "Did I hear 'lunch'?"  
  
"Uh-huh," Jongdae said, smirking.  
  
"Wait for me, I'm coming with you!"  
  
\--  
  
Lunch was a strange affair with Chanyeol's new acquaintances. Whereas Yixing was mostly silent, Jongdae and Seulgi bickered all the time. They kept referring to their leader only using the pronoun 'him' but Chanyeol could tell that apart fairly quickly. Chanyeol half expected to see him pop in at lunch -- his old, reflex habit of looking around for the Guard he had from the Temple still there any time someone new entered the cafeteria. But it was never _him_ and Chanyeol always felt the same odd pang of disappointment. He did not press, however, for he knew now that asking questions would unmistakably leave him with partial to no answers at all and wanted to save himself from any further frustration.  
  
Kyungsoo and Sehun joined them a bit later, along with another man, Minseok, who introduced himself as the gym instructor. He insisted on shaking Chanyeol's hand and nearly crushed it doing so. Chanyeol winced but Minseok merely chuckled, exposing a gummy smile, and told him it would not be a problem after a good training. Chanyeol did not know what to expect, but he doubted that he was going to like it.  
  
He was proved right less than an hour later when Minseok took him to the gym. In the manner of the rest of the base, the gym facilities were impressive too. There were more machines than one could count, a dojo, a shooting range and a swimming pool. Once again, Chanyeol was dragged to a treadmill and a bicycle to run yet another series of tests until he could barely stand on his feet any longer.  
  
"You're still quite weak, but you've got good stamina," Minseok stated, entering some data onto his holo-tab. "We'll start your training tomorrow."  
  
\--  
  
Minseok was a man of his word, as Chanyeol learnt the next day when he was woken up at dawn by an alarm that would not stop ringing until he effectively crawled out of bed. He had been assigned to a real, private room in the habitation wing.  
  
The bedroom was larger and nicer than his cell, had a real bed, a small, separate bathroom and a mirror above the sink. Chanyeol looked at himself -- he had never looked that pale or sick in his whole life, but at the same time, he had never looked so alive. There was a spark in his eyes that he had never seen on himself beforehand, the reflection of something glowing deep inside of him, a fire so wild that it would take a lot to extinguish it. His hair had grown out since he had been abducted. It looked too long and untamed, but he shrugged and ran a lazy hand through it so that it would not stick out in every direction. Just a little more and he would be able to tie it into a small bun and it would not fall in his face anymore.  
  
"You're expected at the gym in ten, so hurry up!" Minseok voice bellowed enthusiastically through the intercom.  
  
"Do I need someone to escort me there?" Chanyeol asked.  
  
"No, you don't. It'll be a good thing that you learn how to navigate the base. You can't leave it unless we allow you to, anyway."  
  
Chanyeol gulped uneasily, not liking being reminded he was a captive here.  
  
It took Chanyeol more than ten minutes to find the gym. He passed several doors that all looked the same, and could not remember which direction he had to take to reach the facilities. When he reached double-doors at the end of a corridor he understood that he was lost. He was tempted to peek inside the room behind those doors but decided against it at the last moment. The doors were slightly different from the others, a little more ornate and conspicuous. He assumed that, like everything else, they were hiding another secret that he would discover when the _right time_ came.  
  
He turned back on his heels and finally found the gym. Minseok was on him immediately, giving him an earful about punctuality and the importance of exactness in martial arts.  
  
Chanyeol's training was harsh and unforgiving. He had to lift weights, swim and run miles, shoot down targets and train to hand-to-hand combat to top it all off.  
  
This went on for days and days. Chanyeol was so tired that he could not feel his limbs when he went to bed at night. But when he woke up, he felt energised, and found himself going to the gym less reluctantly with every passing day. Looking at himself in his bathroom mirror, he noticed the changes such an intensive treatment was having on his body -- he grew lean muscles, lost the softness around his middle and his general stance gradually became more impressive. The best effect of all, however, was the progressive disappearance of his headache, and now that he did not feel it at all anymore, he realised how hard it had been living with it every day. All in all, he had never felt that good in his whole life, which was quite the irony, considering his current situation.  
  
Minseok was strict, but he was a good teacher. Chanyeol was surprised when he started growing closer to him, almost to the point of considering him a friend. A _friend_ \-- a concept that Chanyeol had only read about in books.  
  
The others were not too bad either, after all. Kyungsoo was his usual laconic self, but he was caring to his comrades in small, nearly imperceptible gestures. But Chanyeol was good at observing and they did not go past him. Sehun was a bit friendlier, but he was daydreaming most of the time. The largest part of the conversation was held by Jongdae, who satisfied himself with the situation, filling in the blanks when everybody else was too busy eating.  
  
Yet, their leader was nowhere to be seen. Well, not exactly, Chanyeol could see him around, at times, but they never interacted, and he was growing quite frustrated about it. Why go so far out of his way to kidnap Chanyeol to want nothing to do with him afterwards? It was like all interest he used to have in him had disappeared the second he had been brought to base.  
  
"So, I hear you're getting stronger, Chanyeol?" Jongdae asked casually one day.  
  
Chanyeol put down his fork and frowned.  
  
"I am?" he turned towards Minseok, taken aback by the fact that he was seeking his approval.  
  
"Of course you are!"  
  
"Oh then I guess Baekhyun will take you into training soon!" Jongdae answered cheerfully.  
  
Everyone around the table seemed to freeze at the mention of the name. It was like a bombshell had been dropped in the cafeteria. They all looked at Jongdae with different scales of disapproval.  
  
Chanyeol had put two and two together on his own, anyway. It was like an invisible weight had been lifted off of his shoulders suddenly, the relief of finally knowing his mysterious Guard's name so intense that he could not stand sitting at the table any longer.  
  
He excused himself, left the cafeteria and ran for the gym. He pulled up a punch bag and started hitting it bare fisted until he bled and red droplets marred the thick fabric. He dropped to his knees and breathed heavily, feeling a secular tension drain out from his shoulders.  
  
"You're too weak," someone said from the far end of the gym.  
  
Chanyeol looked up and observed the mastermind of his abduction, _Baekhyun_ , walk up to him. He stopped at the edge of the tatami and sat down on a crate.  
  
"You have to channel your energy better than that," he added, his low, raspy voice echoing off of the naked walls.  
  
Chanyeol stood up, unhooked the punch bag and carried it over to the nearby storage to put it away. He left the dojo without looking back.  
  
Two could play this game, he decided. Now that he _finally_ had condescended to speak to Chanyeol, it was only to insult his shape. What did he expect? That he would become strong overnight? Baekhyun had been ignoring him for so long now that Chanyeol assumed it would do no harm not to acknowledge him in return.  
  
Although, deep down, underneath a thick layer of pride, Chanyeol was a bit flattered that he had caught Baekhyun’s attention at last. But he would die before showing any of it.  
  
\--  
  
"I need to become stronger," Chanyeol said the next day when he was training with Minseok. "I don't know what I'm fighting for, but I know I'm too weak."  
  
"You're not _weak_."  
  
"Yes. I am. I have never fought in my life before. And honestly, if I had had to, I would probably have used my power. Why can't I train with my power, too?"  
  
Minseok pinned Chanyeol to the ground and immobilised him. "You can't," he said, sounding utterly serious. "Ever. You must always hold back."  
  
Chanyeol was about to ask why, without hoping for an actual answer, when the intercom called the staff for an emergency meeting in the meeting room. Minseok frowned and lessened the pressure on Chanyeol's chest. "I have to go," he said gravely. "We'll continue training later. You can swim laps in the meantime."  
  
Chanyeol was quite annoyed not to be invited to the meeting but then again, it did not come across as a surprise. He was getting used to being left out of anything important. Usually, his days were sufficiently busy for him not to ponder over the fact that he had fallen down from the status of god to that of a mere underling not even worth his hierarchy's trust.  
  
He sighed and headed to the pool.  
  
  
That night, Minseok knocked on Chanyeol's bedroom door.  
  
"I had a great time training you, Chanyeol, but alas, this time is over."  
  
"What? Why?" Chanyeol asked, feeling oddly disappointed all of a sudden.  
  
“You’ll be training with Baekhyun from now on.”  
  
“I don’t want to!” Chanyeol said, indignant. Baekhyun seemed arrogant and the only words he had ever said to Chanyeol were demeaning ones. He imagined that training with him would be ten times worse than that, if physical blows were added to the picture.  
  
“Well, you don’t have a say in this. Even if I think you’re not ready, Baekhyun wants to, and we’re running out of time.”  
  
“Running out of time for what? I’m fed up with all of your secrets.” Chanyeol was not even angry anymore. He was just tired.  
  
Minseok sighed and put a reassuring hand on Chanyeol’s shoulder. “I get it,” he patted him and walked to the door. “But you’ll know sooner than later.”  
  
He left Chanyeol alone in his room, the silence weighing over him, resonating with the last words exchanged between them.  
  
His life was already drastically different from what it had been a month prior, but he knew, deep down, that it was going to change again, and that was the most terrifying thought in a world where he did not know what tomorrow would be made of.  
  
\--  


 

**-III-**

  
  
  
If training sessions with Minseok were hard, they were nothing compared to combat against Baekhyun. Baekhyun was like a rock in the middle of the sea, neither waves nor wind blasts could make him move an inch.  
  
But even worse was his attitude -- so smug and condescending, dismissing all of Chanyeol’s efforts of coming at him with a wave of his hand.  
  
Chanyeol was frustrated and angry; it was probably Baekhyun’s goal with all that taunting, snorting and demeaning, but he could not help it, and his incredible amount rage fuelled him in enough to push himself to do better every day.  
  
“You’re not a god!” Baekhyun would spit at him, dodging Chanyeol’s every blow so easily that he might as well have been picking his nails.  
  
“You’re human, and you’re _weak_!” Baekhyun insisted, repeating it like a mantra. It was like Baekhyun was taking perverse pleasure in provoking Chanyeol until the very edge of anger. He knew exactly what buttons to push to play with Chanyeol inner insecurities, his fears and his overwhelming need to become more powerful.  
  
“Why am I here, then? Why are you taking your _precious_ time to train me if I’m so worthless?” Chanyeol retorted back, seeing red every time Baekhyun hit him, a smug spark dancing brightly within the darkness of his eyes.  
  
“You’re not ready to know.”  
  
“Why? I deserve to know! I behaved, I did everything you ordered me to do! I took the freaking pills you fed me like a good boy, I trained hard every day and you’re still giving me bullshit! I want to know!”  
  
“You’d be a liability if you knew now.”  
  
“Fuck you!”  
  
“Hit me once,” Baekhyun replied impassibly. “Just _once_ , and I’ll tell you everything.”  
  
Chanyeol roared then and ran to Baekhyun, trying to strike him with all his strength, but every one of his blows ended its course in mid-air, never reaching its target.  
  
Exhausted, Chanyeol flopped down on the tatami floor heavily, wiping away the sweat flowing in rivulets down his forehead. Every part of his body hurt more than the next and ugly bruises were forming here and there where Baekhyun had hit him a bit too hard.  
  
“You must do better tomorrow,” Baekhyun said, downing the contents of a bottle of water in a few long swallows. The movement of his Adam’s apple made sweat glisten on the upper part of his chest that was not covered by his low-collared tank top. Chanyeol looked away, embarrassed. “You’ll have the answers to your questions if you fight harder.”  
  
Contrary to the time when he was training with Minseok, Chanyeol felt grumpy and on the edge all the time now that he was learning to fight against Baekhyun. He could not deny that his physical shape was improving day by day thanks to the harsh treatment he was submitting himself to, but every encounter with Baekhyun left a bitter taste in his mouth. He had never been insulted and degraded like he was by Baekhyun’s merciless blows and words.  
  
He was boiling inside with so much anger that he needed to channel it out after his training sessions by staying in the gym and pushing his body to extremes until it felt like his limbs would fall off. He requested that Minseok taught him more combat techniques, which he complied to happily.  
  
He knew it, every day took him a little closer to hitting Baekhyun and finally knowing the truth about his presence here. It was like his vision was single-mindedly narrowed on that one goal, and it helped him surviving his otherwise nonsensical existence in captivity.  
  
“What are you doing?” Baekhyun yelled angrily. “You’re not into it! Focus, damn it!”  
  
“Shut up,” Chanyeol growled, trying and failing to kick Baekhyun in the jaw.  
  
“I won’t shut up!” He punched Chanyeol in the gut, effectively cutting off his breath. “Focus!” he repeated, shouting at Chanyeol.  
  
Baekhyun took a few graceful steps backwards and adopted a new defensive stance. “Come on!” he cried.  
  
Chanyeol screamed too, sprinting ahead. He ran to Baekhyun and, at the last moment, took a left and turned around him to hit him in the side where he was most vulnerable. Baekhyun had seen through his move, though, and was quick enough to block Chanyeol’s right hook with an open fist. He stared at him, eyes as bright and fiery as ever.  
  
“You’re wasting my time, _slacker_ ,” he hissed under his breath before pushing Chanyeol away.  
  
Chanyeol staggered backwards, as taken aback physically as his pride was bruised by Baekhyun’s words. He had never worked that hard in his life -- who was Baekhyun thinking he was to debase all his efforts into nothing? Worse, he was calling him a _slacker_! Something clicked deep within Chanyeol’s chest and he felt calm all of a sudden. He sensed all his pent-up energy spread evenly inside his body, coursing through his veins and bones.  
  
Without warning, he steadied himself and, in a split-second, rolled on the floor and tackled Baekhyun down. Taking advantage of his surprise move, he caged Baekhyun’s body between his knees and pinned him to the floor with his forearm across his throat, free hand raised and ready to punch him in the face. For a split second, he thought that his focus would falter because of their weirdly intimate position -- and even if Chanyeol fought it with all of his soul, he could _not_ deny the slight satisfaction and excitement that being on top of Baekhyun provided. Of course, as distracting as it was, it was just a flitting thought, and Chanyeol’s face hardened to hide his inner turmoil.  
  
“Never call me a slacker again,” he muttered, staring down at Baekhyun’s unwavering gaze.  
  
Then, unexpectedly, Baekhyun smirked -- a small, insufferably smug tug of lips. Deeply outraged, Chanyeol shouted and realised at the last moment that a fireball was growing dangerously fast inside his palm. Only the tiny red reflection and the _fear_ he saw in Baekhyun’s eyes could jerk him out of his rage-induced fit. He gasped, swallowing back the fire, pushed himself off of the floor and landed on his backside, utterly shocked at his gut reaction and the irreparable damage it could have caused.  
  
“Sorry! I didn’t realise--”  
  
“Shut it,” Baekhyun said coldly, not looking at Chanyeol. He stood up stiffly, put his shoes on without tying them and walked out of the dojo, kicking a crate on his way and sending it crashing violently against the wall.  
  
“FUCK!” Chanyeol yelled, and his voice bounced off of the gym walls for several, sickly long seconds.  
  
\--  
  
Chanyeol skipped dinner that night. He ran at full speed for as long as he could until his legs gave out and were nothing but two useless bags of pins and needles. He spent a long time in the gym shower, trying to wash away the feeling of guilt that was gnawing at his guts and making him want to break things.  
  
It was way past curfew when he walked back to his bedroom. The corridors were only lit by dim emergency lights, but at that point, he could have gone anywhere in the base blindfolded.  
  
He was just mildly astonished to find Baekhyun sitting on his bed reading one of his comics when he opened his bedroom door. Baekhyun immediately shut the book and dropped it on the bedspread. He stood up and walked right into Chanyeol’s personal space. Chanyeol closed the door behind him and leant his back up against it, leaving as much distance as possible between his own face and Baekhyun’s. Chanyeol swallowed, trying his best to hide his confusion and the small hitch in his breath that such proximity had caused.  
  
Baekhyun slammed a hand on the door panel next to Chanyeol’s head, making him jump with surprise. He planted his index finger painfully on Chanyeol’s chest and jabbed him there, looking him dead in the eye.  
  
“Listen to me, you idiot!” he said, his mouth so close that Chanyeol could feel his breath graze the skin of his chin. “You never, _ever_ use your power again. In _any_ situation!” He sighed, shaking his head with visible irritation. “Understand?”  
  
Frowning, Chanyeol nodded gingerly. “Alright,” he confirmed, making sure to show Baekhyun that he had received the message loud and clear. Baekhyun took a small step backwards, but he was still standing too close for comfort.  
  
“Good,” he said, laying his hand flat on Chanyeol’s shirt and patting it awkwardly. “Your power-- it’s not a blessing, never was.” Chanyeol glanced down at Baekhyun’s hand. The gesture was so foreign -- Baekhyun had never touched him in other situations than combat training, so this was new. Well, not entirely new, to be exact. He had actually been gentle once, back at the Temple when Chanyeol had had his first panic attack. But that might as well have happened in another lifetime, for it seemed so distant and blurry, as if it were not even part of Chanyeol’s own past. He looked back up at Baekhyun, and something had softened in the usually unforgiving darkness of his eyes.  
  
“It’s a curse,” he whispered, biting his lip. Chanyeol watched him do so -- it did not go unnoticed. “So, hold it back. At all costs,” he added, voice breaking a little.  
  
Just before leaving, Baekhyun added, “Meet me in the conference room tomorrow, first thing in the morning.”  
  
As he was lying awake long after Baekhyun’s departure, Chanyeol thought about Baekhyun’s words about his power being a curse, turning them and taking them apart in his head until they did not mean anything anymore.  
  
That was not the only thing keeping Chanyeol from sleeping, but he preferred to stay away from potentially slippery terrain. He had never been physically attracted to someone before, and knowing that it might very well be the case now was upsetting him unreasonably.  
  
\--  
  
Chanyeol’s assumptions about the double-doors at the end of the corridor had been right -- they led to Baekhyun’s office through a large meeting room, one wall of which was only glass. Chanyeol froze in his spot when he looked through the giant window.  
  
“Pretty, isn’t it?” Jongdae said slowly.  
  
“Stars…” Chanyeol said, awestruck.  
  
Chanyeol lived in a space station, granted, but it was his first time seeing the stars with his own eyes and not via holograms, books or video clips. The Dome was opaque and its ceiling only mimicked a starry sky during Night Mode. It was nothing, however, _nothing_ , compared to what Chanyeol was seeing at that moment.  
  
Space was wonderful. There were no words strong enough to describe how Chanyeol felt discovering a glimpse of the immensity of it through the window of a nondescript meeting room. It was not just black as he had imagined it to be. All kinds of bright, decadent hues blended together, wrapping constellations in luscious curls. The red glow of Alpha Centauri C warmed him up to his bones, leaving him weak in the knees.  
  
“Beautiful,” he uttered, incapable of forming a full sentence.  
  
“It had the same effect on all of us,” Jongdae said, breaking the spell with a loud laugh.  
  
“Where are we? Are we even on Sacred Fire anymore?” Chanyeol asked, eyes still glued to the spectacular real-life painting he was offered to admire.  
  
“We’re in the Lower Dome. We refurbished old unused storage rooms to hide our base. Yet, we didn’t have it in us to conceal the view.”  
  
"You'll get used to it," Kyungsoo said as he entered the room.  
  
"Take a seat," Sehun ordered as he came in too and sat down in a comfortable-looking wheelie chair facing the window. Chanyeol followed him, looking around at the other people present in the room -- Yixing, Seulgi, Minseok, Kyungsoo, Sehun and Jongdae -- before resuming his mesmerising stargazing activity.  
  
After some time, he heard Baekhyun clear his throat and reluctantly turned in his direction. He sat down at the end of the table like the chairman of a big firm. Chanyeol snorted at the idea. Baekhyun's severe look killed in the bud any other tendency to laugh about the situation.  
  
"Chanyeol," he started off gravely. "We promised you some answers. Well, here they are." He stood up, apparently too agitated to sit still. "We're a community, a group of people who, for different reasons, decided to stand against the Clergy by taking charge. Some of us are from Earth and were promised a better future than a life under a radiation-proof dome. Some of us are from the City. Some of us are galaxy ice-hunters. What we share, though, is our hatred towards the Clergy. They've hunted down people with special 'abilities' like you Chanyeol. You're not alone, but you're the ‘lucky’ one to have piqued their interest. I see you frowning -- there are multiple reasons that all of us Temps should hate them! They're using us, treating us like garbage for their own benefit."  
  
Jongdae took up from there, "I'm sure you've always wondered why the people adored you so blindly. Not that you're not a lovable person, don't get me wrong but--"  
  
"The point, Jongdae!" Baekhyun cut him off abruptly.  
  
"Sure, sorry. The thing is, there's a reason why your authority as a god was never questioned by the people," he paused, wincing a little. "They've been drugged, Chanyeol. The air that they breathe, it's laced with a gas, a gas that makes them obedient and gullible. They drink your words, worship the ground you walk on, not because you're a flawless, powerful god but because they've been under the influence for years. The control the Clergy have on the people is nothing but an artificial and fragile one. Most of us are from Earth, and our immunity to the gas made us different from the beginning. But… I’m getting off topic!"  
  
Chanyeol had grown very still, as if the shock was so great that it had paralysed his body. His closed fists were like two rocks, white-knuckled and trembling with badly-repressed emotion.  
  
"That's where _you_ played your part, Chanyeol," Baekhyun picked up the explanation where Jongdae had left it off. "As you may have put it together by yourself, you went under withdrawal at the beginning of your stay here. That's why we had to put you in quarantine while you recovered. You were drugged too, but with something even heavier. Haven't you ever wondered why you had mood swings, why you were irritated all the time, why your senses were numbed? Why you... couldn't enjoy sex?"  
  
Chanyeol felt his cheeks heat up. To what extent had he been monitored when he was still living in the Temple?  
  
"You were the Priestess' puppet, Chanyeol. She toyed with you, she used you to mollify the crowd and justify everything she did through some holy bullshit! But we managed to infiltrate the Clergy Headquarters, it was easier for some of us, like Yixing, who had been working there for a long time. We started administering you the antidote to the drug they were feeding you via Yixing. There were side effects, and I'm sorry about that. I know your headache was worse for wear, but it was all for the greater good. You're finally yourself."  
  
Before Chanyeol could say anything, Jongdae talked again, probably sensing that if Baekhyun continued speaking, the conversation would heat up and slip towards dangerous territories.  
  
"But there's a flaw in the Priestess' plan. They're running short of gas. They hadn't expected that the population would increase so much in so little time. Even the Contraception Act was not enough. This is why the people have been acting up recently. They're becoming themselves again, and they're refusing the system as it is. And this is our cue to take our plan into action."  
  
Chanyeol lifted his hand and stood up, effectively silencing Jongdae. "Wait. What plan? And why are you involving me in your grand scheme? Have you ever heard of the notion of consent? Have you ever wondered if what you're doing, depriving a whole, desperate people of their god is the _right_ thing to do?"  
  
Baekhyun snorted, shaking his head and laughing humourlessly.  
  
"You don't understand. The Clergy couldn't care _less_ about you. They've been drugging and using you your whole life and here you are, talking consent and what's right or wrong! We gave you freedom, and the opportunity to make a choice that actually _matters_. Here," Baekhyun clicked on a remote control and a hologram rose above the meeting table. It was a broadcast of Chanyeol on Temple Square. "They're looping old holograms of you, and the people are completely buying their shit. Believe me, the Clergy don't need you anymore. And the next time they see you, they won't hesitate to kill you. You're of no use to them anymore."  
  
Chanyeol settled back into his seat heavily, letting everything sink in.  
  
"What-- what's the plan?"  
  
Baekhyun sighed, probably with relief, before speaking again, "We're going shut the gas vents so that the people rebel and start a civil war. We'll take advantage of the chaos to create a distraction and use one of the cargo ships at the spaceports to get the hell out of here."  
  
"Wait," Chanyeol said, alarmed. "There's a major loophole in your plan. What are you doing about the people? You're not going to let them rot on this bloody station and leave them to their obvious deaths, are you?"  
  
"We could also blow the station up. We have enough explosive to destroy ten of them. That would be less cruel, in a way."  
  
"Are you fucking serious? There's no way I'm part of that plan! It's terrible!"  
  
"They're doomed, anyway! Chanyeol, it's them or us. This station's been dying for decades now, at least by saving ourselves we'll save the last sane ones here."  
  
"Sane? You’re kidding me, right? You're completely _nuts_ , have you heard yourself?"  
  
"Chanyeol, he's not wrong," Minseok said calmly. "We all reacted like you at first, but come to think of it, there's nothing else we can do."  
  
"There has to be something..." Chanyeol sighed, running a clammy palm down his face.  
  
"Believe us, we've thought things through over and over again. If there was an alternative, be sure that we'd take it with our eyes closed."  
  
"Actually... there's something," Seulgi said, hesitantly. "But it's very risky and it could jeopardise the whole plan if we were caught."  
  
"What is it?" Baekhyun asked impatiently.  
  
"Well, I have contacts in the Clergy Headquarters, but they're not always reachable, and as I told you, it's very risky. Anyway, I could try to hack into the Clergy's computers and establish contact with Earth."  
  
"You could do that?" Jongdae asked, badly concealing his admiration.  
  
"I'm not sure I can. And there's no guarantee that Earth will reply at all. So, the percentage of success is about... 8 to 12%, I'd say?"  
  
"Damn it, that's too freaking low." Jongdae said dejectedly.  
  
"We can't risk all of our lives over such low rates," Baekhyun stated, sounding final.  
  
Chanyeol stood up again, still shaking with remnants of his previous shock. "I need to think about this, I'll be in my room if you need to talk to me."  
  
\--  
  
It took Chanyeol several days to wrap his head around the idea that he would probably be abandoning his people for the sake of his own freedom, and in the case he did not, his fate was sealed -- he would be stuck in the secret Lower Dome base for the rest of his life. And if he ever wanted to resurface then, he would be tracked down and killed on the spot by the Clergy-run Militia.  
  
Baekhyun was too busy planning their upcoming mission to train him, so it was Minseok again that Chanyeol met at the dojo. It was both a relief and a disappointment. He liked training with Minseok, but he now felt like he was going too easy on him. He needed to be shaken out of his thoughts all the time, or he was going crazy thinking of all the lives that were bound to be destroyed if they stuck to their plan.  
  
Somehow, Chanyeol could not resign himself to accepting it at their only option.  
  
The days before the mission seemed a bit surreal to Chanyeol. It was like he was experiencing his life from outside of his body, going about his daily routine on autopilot, not tasting anything he ate, not feeling it when a blow hit him on the chest, and not appreciating the relief of a shower after a whole day of combat training. His mind was detached, wandering about and trying to figure an alternative plan on its own, and finding none.  
  
Chanyeol had the gut feeling that Baekhyun was making sure to avoid running into him at all costs. Was it the safer route? Probably. Chanyeol always had the urge to land a fist on his pretty face every time he caught a glimpse of it. But after having implicitly accepted to participate in the mission, it would have been nothing but hypocritical. So he laid low for a while, and never went out of his way for fear of breaking his fragile resolve, come an unexpected event.  
  
On the night before the mission, Seulgi came into Chanyeol's room with a suspicious white plastic bottle in her hand.  
  
"Thanks for helping us," she said. Chanyeol wanted to believe that it was heartfelt.  
  
"Sure," he replied, marking the page he had been reading and shutting his comic book. "I can’t say I'm happy about it, but there's no other way, is it?"  
  
She sighed and walked towards Chanyeol's bathroom. "Come here. If you're going to the Clergy headquarters tomorrow, I need to dye your hair. This red is a bit... noticeable."  
  
Chanyeol looked at his reflection. His hair was long now, slicked back and tied messily. He got rid of the band and shook his head. He had to admit that his naturally fiery mane was conspicuous, to say the least.  
  
"But I like it red," he protested, just to be contrary.  
  
She smiled longingly. "It will still be red. But darker. Think of copper, how does that sound?"  
  
\--  
  
The next evening, Chanyeol was presented with an outfit that was way too familiar to him. One that he had never worn, but had seen every day in the Temple on the Clergy personnel. It was a simple white suit made up of a strange fabric between polyester and PVC, and it stuck to his skin in a very unpleasant way. He could not believe that people wore that on a daily basis and never complained. But then again, they were probably drugged, like everyone else, and at the thought, Chanyeol groaned disapprovingly.  
  
He was also given a laser gun that he hooked to a thigh holster. Even if he was a good shot, thanks to Minseok’s intensive training at the shooting range, he was very reluctant to use the gun. Shooting at a paper sheet or a dummy and killing a person were two drastically different things, and Chanyeol was not sure he would be able to do it, come the opportunity.  
  
To complete the outfit, he put on a dark visor, making himself anonymous and unremarkable amongst the generic crowd of the clergy employees.  
  
When he met Baekhyun in his office that morning, he was wearing the same costume. The sight of Baekhyun with a visor brought him back a few months before, when he was still a clueless, puppet god.  
  
"Hello, Chanyeol."  
  
"Hello." Those were the first words they exchanged properly in days.  
  
"Good thing you dyed your hair," Baekhyun said simply.  
  
"You'll have to thank Seulgi about that."  
  
It was so formal, and so forced that Chanyeol decided not to speak at all. Small talk was not his forte, anyway. He had never been subject to it. Baekhyun seemed to be going along with this decision perfectly.  
  
Their mission was to enter the surveillance room of the security tower east of the headquarters. There, they would have to steal one or more digicards for later purposes and hack into the control panel to get a security password.  
  
Baekhyun had told them that it was a fairly easy recon mission, but they had to be careful anyway; they did not want to attract unnecessary attention.  
  
Along with Minseok and Seulgi, they were transported to the Upper Dome ground on a hidden goods lift. They emerged in a farm’s hover-truck hangar. Someone was waiting for them in the driver's seat of one of the trucks and they hopped in. The ride was short and uneventful. They were dropped in a dark alley about a hundred yards east of Temple Square. There, they waited until a procession of Clergy workers arrived, prepared to clock in for the night shift. They joined the end of the group, helped by the darkness of Night Mode and were not spotted. Entering the tower was as easy as Baekhyun had predicted, but it was only the beginning, and Chanyeol's heart was already hammering in his chest.  
  
Minseok's duty was to stay next to the exit and, might a dangerous situation occur, he had to connect everyone's holo-watches and contact the underground team to back them up.  
  
Chanyeol and Baekhyun were to escort Seulgi to the surveillance room first, and then to the computer room where they would be able to retrieve the password. They had studied the tower's blueprints a few days prior, so navigating the corridors was quick and efficient.  
  
The CCTV room had a whole wall covered in surveillance screens. Two security guards were analysing the images on the screen, and they were so focused on their task that they did not hear them coming in. Baekhyun pointed at one of them and Chanyeol nodded, then they both walked up behind each one stealthily and neutralised them thanks to swift, precise moves. Chanyeol pocketed the digicard he had taken off the guard and looked up at the screen.  
  
What he saw was like a punch in the gut. It was a footage of the CCTV from the vent room. He saw tens of people with ghastly black gas masks straight from a nightmare, preparing huge tanks of gas, and hooking heavy-looking pipes to the vents that released the gas directly into the artificial atmosphere of the Upper Dome. So it was true. Chanyeol had not realised until then that it was possible to take a blow from reality as if it were an actual slap across the face.  
  
Baekhyun waved at him from the other end of the room impatiently. "Come on, we have to move along!" he hissed and looked up at what Chanyeol was watching in horror. "I didn't lie to you. You can call me a monster all you want, but they’re a hundred times worse. They need to be stopped."  
  
Chanyeol nodded emphatically, appalled, shocked, but more determined than ever.  
  
The computer room was located two doors over in the same corridor as the surveillance room. While Chanyeol secured the doorway, Baekhyun knocked out the only employee working there at the moment. Seulgi took his place and started typing away on the holo-comp at a frightening speed. She kept glancing around nervously but seemed efficient anyway, twisting and turning the code flying in mid-air with rapid fingers. Chanyeol was impressed by such a display of cold-blooded competence. At last, she inserted a stick into the mainframe and the lines of codes were replaced by a progress bar.  
  
While it lasted, Chanyeol took out the digicard he had stolen and observed it. It looked familiar, but something seemed off with it -- he could not tell what exactly. What he knew is that the high Priestess' sure did not look the same.  
  
When the bar hit 100% eventually, Seulgi sighed long and low before nodding at Baekhyun.  
  
"I've got the password," she said, pulling the stick out and storing it carefully into a small case. "We have ten days starting from now to act before it's automatically changed again."  
  
"Alright," Baekhyun replied. "Good job."  
  
"It took longer than I thought," she added, looking slightly worried. "I'm afraid that they've been increasing security. I think we've only got one shot at this. I'm not sure that I'll be able to get another password in case we failed."  
  
"We'll succeed, then," Baekhyun said, sounding more assured than he appeared.  
  
They escorted Seulgi back to the exit where Minseok was still waiting.  
  
"Ready to take off?" he asked.  
  
"Yeah," Baekhyun said.  
  
"Wait!" Chanyeol exclaimed at the same time.  
  
"What?" Baekhyun frowned. "We don't have time."  
  
"I remember now!" Chanyeol said, dismissing Baekhyun's irritation. "The digicards we got, the blue ones, they work for limited areas only. I bet they don't grant access to the vent rooms. We need the red one. It’s the master key to the headquarters. We have to find who's in charge here and take their card."  
  
"Shit!" Baekhyun cursed. He looked at Seulgi and Minseok. "You go back to base. Chanyeol and I will go look for the card. If we're not back within an hour, send a backup team."  
  
"Roger that," Minseok nodded gravely. "Be careful."  
  
"You know I will," Baekhyun said, handing Seulgi a blue digicard. She swiped it to open the door and they ran out.  
  
With the security tower map in their minds, Chanyeol and Baekhyun wandered the endless corridors without bumping into anybody.  
  
Chanyeol had never actually been there before, but it felt like he had, since the decorum was quite similar to the wing of the Temple where he used to live. The same long, immaculate corridors with rows and rows of nameless doors, the same cold, glaring neon lights erasing all shadow. Chanyeol felt trapped and oppressed -- he recognised the feeling now. It was a feeling he had had every day before being kidnapped, and had mistaken this as casual unease, when in reality, he had been imprisoned all along. There was nothing normal about feeling caged in a place supposed to be home -- Chanyeol understood it only then, and it had taken a spectacular abduction, an awfully painful drug withdrawal and intensive physical practice to come to that conclusion. Chanyeol's hatred for the Clergy only grew again, and he was more than ready to fight to the finish.  
  
"Damn it, where are they?" Baekhyun hissed, pushing a random door open and looking inside a dark room.  
  
"Who're you looking for?" someone said from behind them.  
  
Both Chanyeol and Baekhyun made a sudden about-turn. Two Guards were looking at them, hands on their laser guns.  
  
"Suspicious activity around the computer room was reported and three employees were found unconscious. Do you have anything to do with that?"  
  
What a stupid question, Chanyeol thought.  
  
"Let's run," Baekhyun whispered so that only Chanyeol would hear.  
  
So he did, following Baekhyun through the maze of corridors. Their surprise escape had given them a small head-start that they could use to their advantage if they were smart. The Guards were not far behind them but if they took two sharp turns quickly enough, they had a slight chance to lose them.  
  
"Follow me!" Chanyeol said. He did not wait for Baekhyun's approval and made a right turn, then another immediately after. According to the map in his mind's eye, they were facing the double-doors to a locker room. They pushed them swiftly and were suddenly standing between two rows of metallic employee units.  
  
"Well spotted," Baekhyun admitted before taking charge again.  
  
They ran to the far end of the room where there was another door. They swiped the remaining blue digicard to open it and found a tiny supply closet. Chanyeol nearly tripped on a haphazardly placed box and grabbed onto a nearby shelf to steady himself and prevent from falling and giving away their position. Baekhyun contorted himself but managed to close the door on them.  
  
Chanyeol was practically caging Baekhyun's body between his outstretched arms, hovering over him -- had the situation been completely different, their position would have screamed intimacy. They waited in stuffy silence -- apart from Chanyeol's heart beating crazily -- for several minutes, listening in for the smallest sound, but after a while without hearing anything, they allowed themselves to exhale in relief. Baekhyun looked up at Chanyeol, his face so close that, even in the semi-darkness, he could make out a small mole right above his upper lip. Chanyeol swallowed and closed his eyes to keep himself from staring. After a tension-charged moment, Baekhyun chanced a glance out -- no one.  
  
"Let's look through the lockers if we get any luck,"  
  
They searched quickly but fruitlessly for a while before facing reality -- they would not find the master key there.  
  
"Let's get out of here," Baekhyun said.  
  
"How did you know they would not fire earlier?" Chanyeol was too curious to resist asking.  
  
Baekhyun snorted, "I've been in the Guard, remember?" How could he not? "We had orders not to fire unless we were sure of the identity of the opponent. Which is a pretty humane order coming from pigs like the Clergy," he added, watching through the double-door window. Chanyeol stood in front of the other door; the coast was clear.  
  
"I remember that there's an office not far from here, I think we should check there."  
  
They walked with faked casualness and purpose, pretending to abide to their undercover functions. The office was indeed only two doors down but when they swiped their stolen card the little red LED started blinking and an alarm rung above their heads.  
  
"Fuck!"  
  
Before they could run away, however, the door they had been trying to open slid in front of them, revealing a Clergy officer. They shoved him in without preamble and closed the door behind them.  
  
"Watch the door!" Baekhyun ordered as he took out his gun and pointed the cannon straight at the officer's forehead.  
  
"Gimme your digicard, scumbag, or I blow your brains out."  
  
Hands quaking, the officer complied, unhooking a red card from his belt loop.  
  
"Enjoy your nap," Baekhyun added once he had taken the card, and knocked him out with the butt of his laser gun.  
  
"And now let's hope all those hours you used running the treadmill were time well spent."  
  
The alarm was blaring now, nearly rendering them deaf when they ran next to the speakers. Luckily, they were now very familiar with the succession of corridors and stairs and managed to get to the exit without having been spotted. When they ended up outside of the tower in the alley where the truck had dropped them earlier, they slowed down until they were just walking along the dark wall, away from a floating phyto-light orb.  
  
"That was a close call," Chanyeol said between two breaths.  
  
"Sure..." Baekhyun said. He brandished the red card, then, and beamed at Chanyeol. "But we made it!"  
  
Chanyeol was so hypnotised by the brightness of Baekhyun's smile that he did not respond.  
  
Baekhyun put the digicard away, turned on his holo-watch and typed something quickly. He straightened up and slapped Chanyeol in the back.  
  
"Good job back there," he said, staring at Chanyeol with some mischief dancing in his expressive eyes. Chanyeol held his gaze steadily. Less than a minute later, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a truck turning in on the alley and Baekhyun swivelled to wave at the driver, breaking the moment.  
  
"Now, on to the next step," Baekhyun said as he hopped into the back of the truck. Chanyeol followed, wondering what tomorrow would be made of, but not quite fearing it like he used to.  
  
\--  
  
That night, Chanyeol was too high on adrenaline to be able to sleep. He tried to read a little but he could not focus at all, his head full as it was with reruns of their successful mission, the less glorious parts too, especially the moment where they were almost caught and were forced to hide in a closet so cramped that they had no other choice than wait right up each other's personal space.  
  
Chanyeol could still recollect the fresh smell of soap mixed with the sour tang of sweat emanating from Baekhyun's skin. But more than the look in Baekhyun's eyes, more than his scent, it was remembering Baekhyun's smile that made Chanyeol's stomach flutter in a way he was not familiar with.  
  
He had read enough books, though, to be aware of what it meant, and he was not sure whether he was ready to embrace the implications of such ill-advised and badly-timed attraction or not.  
  
There was no way that giving in to temptation could end well for anyone.  
  
But then again, was it worth it being reasonable all the time when your fate was as good as sealed?  
  
Chanyeol did not exactly have time to ponder over it, because someone knocked on his door, interrupting his rather devious thoughts. A quick glance at the holo-clock indicated that it was both past curfew and past any appropriate time to call in on somebody, in their bedroom to top it all off.  
  
Chanyeol smirked, thinking that he would rather spend his not-sleeping time in someone's company than by himself. Plus, he had the intimate conviction that none other than Baekhyun was standing behind the door. At that point, it was just a matter of time, really, before either one of them walked up to the other’s bedroom door with obvious intentions. Chanyeol’s stomach squirmed with anticipation.  
  
He tossed the comic book away and got out of bed, smoothing down his wrinkled tank top. He only had underwear on as bottoms but he did not care. Whoever it was had probably already seen him, if not naked, then nearly so, on more than one occasions.  
  
Chanyeol schooled his expression into a neutral one before opening the door. Baekhyun was also dressed down to a fitting t-shirt highlighting the broad line of his shoulders and a pair of relaxed bottoms -- they were clearly made for sleeping. Maybe Baekhyun was having a hard time finding his peace of mind too? The ruffled state of his hair and the slack line of his mouth showed that he had probably tried to sleep but that something had bothered him enough to take him out of bed and bring him to Chanyeol's room instead. Chanyeol felt something stir in his chest, followed by a full-body shiver -- and it was not due to the cold, because the temperature was set to warm perfection.  
  
"Evening," Chanyeol said, surprised at how low and hoarse he sounded.  
  
Then, Baekhyun quickly glanced at Chanyeol's mouth, and it was all the trigger he really needed to make a move. The tiny spark in Baekhyun's eyes was all it took to set off the fire that burnt low in the pit of Chanyeol's stomach when he grabbed onto Baekhyun's collar and pulled him in, crashing their lips together.  
  
Baekhyun responded immediately and perfectly, as if he were always meant to kiss Chanyeol this way. He flung his arms around Chanyeol's neck and sucked at his lower lip greedily, managing to kick the door shut behind him at the same time.  
  
"Evening," he replied at last in-between heated kisses. Chanyeol licked the luscious curve of Baekhyun's Cupid’s bow, nipping at it. Baekhyun groaned and ran his fingers through the shorter hair on Chanyeol's nape. Chanyeol grabbed his hips, pulling Baekhyun flush against his body. They both moaned with the contact. "I couldn't stop thinking about you," Baekhyun added, lips going down Chanyeol's cheek and ending up on his neck, sucking bruises there. "Kept me from sleeping."  
  
"Hmm," Chanyeol purred. "I was thinking about you, too."  
  
"You were?" Baekhyun pulled back a little, breathing short and rough, and grinned up at Chanyeol. "We make a good team, don't we? Competent--"  
  
"Strong," Chanyeol continued.  
  
"Smart--"  
  
"Efficient," Chanyeol added with a chuckle. "You have no idea how I bad I wanted you back in that closet."  
  
"Uh, quite the opposite. I'm sure I have a pretty accurate idea."  
  
Baekhyun took charge, then, pushing Chanyeol with a hand flat on his chest. Chanyeol complied, walking backwards until the back of his shins hit the edge of the bed. He let himself sit down on it, pulling Baekhyun by his backside to wedge him securely in his lap.  
  
Baekhyun resumed his assault on Chanyeol's lips, face and neck, licking, suckling and nipping alternatively. Chanyeol's hands snuck under Baekhyun's top, kneading his back and caressing it with the tips of his fingers.  
  
"Fuck, it's so hot," Chanyeol groaned, tugging the hem of Baekhyun's shirt. Baekhyun helped him take it off and Chanyeol could not help leaning away for a few seconds just to admire the statuesque definition of Baekhyun's chest. "Wow, _you're_ hot," he blurted out.  
  
Baekhyun laughed, low and husky. "I'm sure you're not bad either, with all the training you went under," he said. "Let's find out, shall we?"  
  
Chanyeol nodded dumbly and lifted his arms to let Baekhyun take his tank top off. The shirt had barely touched the floor when Baekhyun pushed Chanyeol further up the bed, running his palms over the exposed skin of Chanyeol's pectorals and belly. Chanyeol lied down on his back, enjoying Baekhyun's skilled hands and placing his own onto his narrow waist, pulling him down to try and take them even closer than they already were. Baekhyun's hips canted up, then, and their erections brushed one another. They both moaned loudly, with mild surprise and a great deal of arousal. Chanyeol started grinding up, seeking more friction.  
  
"If we keep this up I'm not gonna last long," Baekhyun said, but did nothing to stop their movements. He leant down, peppering Chanyeol's chest with oddly out-of-place tiny pecks. They were more affectionate and less rough than everything they had been doing for the better part of the last half hour.  
  
But the urgency of the situation made itself clear again when Chanyeol started leaking, and a wet spot appeared on the front of his underwear. "Someone's excited," Baekhyun deadpanned.  
  
"Oh, you could tell?" Chanyeol tried to answer with humour, but it was probably lost on Baekhyun, since his voice broke shamefully in the process.  
  
"I can't wait anymore, let's get to it, please," Chanyeol said, and the look in Baekhyun's eyes told him that he knew _exactly_ what needed to be done.  
  
Baekhyun crawled up the bed, hauling Chanyeol along with impressive strength. He pinned him to the mattress in a more pleasant and much sexier rendition of their usual brawling in the dojo. For once, Chanyeol did not resent being manhandled. Baekhyun planted a hungry open-mouthed kiss on Chanyeol's mouth, sucking his tongue lavishly. Chanyeol responded just as eagerly by biting Baekhyun's lips and bucking his hips up in cadence. He felt that he was close to release and whispered as much straight into Baekhyun's mouth.  
  
"Okay, let's get rid of these, then," he answered, pulling Chanyeol's underwear down. He knelt up to help him shimmy out of it and free his erection. Chanyeol did not remember a time when he had been that hard. It was the first time he was about to engage in sex with someone that he was actually attracted to and shared some kind of emotional bond with. It was both exciting and terrifying.  
  
Looking impatient, Baekhyun fished out a small can of lubricant spray out of his own pants, put it next to them and threw the piece of clothing away aggressively. He was probably as hard as Chanyeol, who noticed thanks to the wet shimmer at the tip that he was oozing precome too. Baekhyun pumped himself slickly before reaching down to grab Chanyeol's cock and give it a few good tugs. Chanyeol grunted and arched his back off of the mattress for more contact, but he was deprived of it mere seconds after having enjoyed it.  
  
"I need to prepare you, is that okay?" Baekhyun asked.  
  
"Yeah, totally," Chanyeol nodded for emphasis and spread his legs, welcoming Baekhyun between them. "Oh--"  
  
Chanyeol had been with men in the past, but he had never experienced being on the receiving end of the deal. It was not that he had not wanted it, but he had never been particularly interested in it. Sex had been but a means to tire himself out on restless nights, a way to guarantee that he would have a good night's sleep afterwards. Sex had always been quick and impersonal, he had never quite enjoyed nor despised it, and his many different partners had been pliant but not responding.  
  
It was so different with Baekhyun. He was warm and alive and looked like he enjoyed every step of the way, a complete one-eighty from what Chanyeol had experienced before. Baekhyun looked at him with fondness and admiration while working him loose and ready, and stopped at times to soothe him with gentle kisses. The previous urge they both felt had not faded one bit, but they knew it was important that Chanyeol was properly open for what was to come next. The wait would make it all even better, if possible.  
  
"I--I think you're ready," Baekhyun murmured, kissing the corner of Chanyeol's mouth.  
  
"Well, that's a good thing because I've been on the edge for a while now," Chanyeol replied, kissing Baekhyun more fully and wetly.  
  
"Good." Baekhyun sat up on his hills and reached for the lube spray. He coated himself with a generous amount of it, leaving a nice and slick protective layer on his member. He leant back down and, kissing Chanyeol long and hard, lined himself up with his entrance. "Ready?"  
  
Chanyeol nodded and hummed against Baekhyun's swollen lips. "Go," he whispered.  
  
Baekhyun pushed in, slowly but with a good amount strength. Chanyeol was well prepared, but he felt the sting of it anyway. It was a pleasurable kind of pain, however, and he sighed loudly when Baekhyun was fully sheathed at last. Baekhyun's impatience was palpable, it was even visible in the slight tick on the corner of his lip, but he remained still, waiting for Chanyeol to adjust to the intrusion.  
  
"It feels so good," Chanyeol said. "You can move, I'm alright."  
  
Baekhyun did. And it was a sudden explosion of Chanyeol's senses unlike anything he had ever felt before. It was as if all his nerve endings were electrified, and power was coursing through them in waves at the same pace as Baekhyun's hip thrusts. Baekhyun moved carefully but deep, _deep_ , and Chanyeol could not do anything but accompany his every move with an arch of his back or a wave of his pelvis, welcoming Baekhyun's whole length as if it had been designed to fit in there from the very beginning.  
  
"Holy fuck, Chanyeol--"  
  
"Yeah... yes, don't slow down."  
  
Baekhyun did the opposite of slowing down. He had obviously been holding back for Chanyeol's sake, but now that he was nicely open and loose, it was as if he could not suppress it any longer. He picked up his pace, pistoning his hips relentlessly, showing off the same kind of power and stamina that Chanyeol was used to witnessing in very different situations. Baekhyun propped himself up and shifted angles slightly, to go deeper and faster.  
  
"Ah! Yes, there-- there!" Chanyeol chanted, as surprised as he was aroused. He grabbed onto Baekhyun's muscular shoulders, holding onto them like a lifeline. Baekhyun plunged in again, apparently spurred on by Chanyeol's reaction. He continued abusing the same spot and soon, Chanyeol could not keep his eyes open and saw white behind his eyelids.  
  
"Baekhyun, Baekhyun please, I'm--"  
  
"Yeah?" Baekhyun exhaled loudly, wet air hitting the side of Chanyeol's cheek, before kissing him behind the ear.  
  
"I'm about to come," Chanyeol rasped out, breath ragged and seeking Baekhyun's lips.  
  
Baekhyun fell down on his left elbow and took Chanyeol's length in his right fist, stroking him at the same rapid pace as his hips. His movements turned erratic and less coordinated, but they were all the more enjoyable.  
  
"I'm close, too..."  
  
After a few more thrusts in, Chanyeol cried out and came all over Baekhyun's hand and his own stomach in long, white spurts. He came and came for several seconds, shaken with small jerks and clenching around Baekhyun reflexively. Baekhyun growled, biting Chanyeol's collarbone and even drawing a bit of blood when he came, grunting against Chanyeol's chest as he did.  
  
He stayed there for a few minutes, breath and heartbeat calming down as sweat was cooling off on their skin.  
  
He pulled out after a while longer, peeling off the solidified sprayed film from his now limp member. "So that's how it feels like to fuck a God," he said, chuckling as he rolled away from Chanyeol's body and made himself comfortable on the sheets.  
  
"I thought I wasn't a god?" Chanyeol decided that they could be two to play this game.  
  
"Hmm, I might re-examine this."  
  
"Feel free to examine it again whenever you want and as many times as you need," Chanyeol replied, turning his head lazily towards Baekhyun’s lying form. He was smiling beatifically but he would have bet that his face was reflecting the same kind of grin at the moment.  
  
"Let's sleep for now and see what we're up to in the morning."  
  
"Sounds good."  
  
Chanyeol cleaned up their mess before he slipped under the sheets and tucked Baekhyun in, inviting him silently to settle in the embrace of his arms if he wished too. Baekhyun looked at him for a long time, then his face softened into the slack mask of exhaustion and he gave in, planting a small kiss on Chanyeol's lips.  
  
"Good night, _Your Lordship_ ," he said sarcastically.  
  
"Shut up and sleep."  
  
\--  
  
When Chanyeol woke up, Baekhyun was sitting on the edge of the bed fully clothed.  
  
"What are you doing up already?" Chanyeol asked, looking at the clock. "It's still the middle of the night. C'mere," he added, gesturing to Baekhyun to join him again.  
  
Baekhyun shook his head. "Not tired anymore," Baekhyun said evasively.  
  
"But we didn't even get three hours of sleep, how can you be _not_ tired?"  
  
"Shh--" Baekhyun cut him off. "I wanna show you something."  
  
"Can't it wait till morning?"  
  
"Get up, you lazy slob," Baekhyun insisted, pulling the covers off of Chanyeol's body, which woke him up more effectively.  
  
"What do I get in reward?"  
  
"Come on, Chanyeol. Quit being a dick!" Baekhyun sighed with so much exasperation that Chanyeol stopped his act altogether and sat up on the mattress.  
  
"Alright, fine..." he said, feeling around in the dark for his clothes.  
  
As soon as he was ready, Baekhyun grabbed his hand impatiently and led him through the base. Chanyeol followed blindly, still partly asleep and a bit sore too. Whatever Baekhyun wanted to show him must have been important and time-related because they all but rushed through halls and corridors.  
  
They finally reached the conference room. Baekhyun ushered Chanyeol into his office and then through another door at the back of it that Chanyeol, despite his observational skills, had never spotted before. It led to a large and empty circular room, with glass walls through which Chanyeol could admire the immensity of space again.  
  
"We're a bit early," Baekhyun checked his holo-watch again. "You're not afraid of heights, are you?" he asked casually.  
  
"Uh, I... don't think so?" Chanyeol answered, unsure.  
  
"Or, of space?"  
  
"Definitely not."  
  
"Good, then."  
  
Baekhyun walked to the concrete wall, opened a small panel and pushed a button. Chanyeol nearly jumped when a very large blind slowly slid open... below his feet. He was walking on glass, thick and sturdy, granted, but also directly above a sky full of stars.  
  
"What the..."  
  
Baekhyun chuckled and came up next to him. He fell to his knees and lied down on his stomach. He tossed a cushion he had picked on his office sofa to Chanyeol.  
  
Chanyeol lied down too, placing the cushion under his chest, and started staring at the space expanding under him.  
  
"I like to come here to think," Baekhyun said.  
  
"I-- it's beautiful. Feels like I'm flying."  
  
"Yeah, look" Baekhyun pointed down to their left. “See the red star over there? That is Proxima Centauri."  
  
Chanyeol looked. He had never seen anything so breath-takingly amazing in his whole life.  
  
"Our own sunrise," Baekhyun sighed longingly.  
  
The star was glowing red -- a soft, pastel finish. It looked like a fireball waiting to burst, dark and moving, radiating orange, golden and crimson hues in constant evolution. The star was surrounded by a lighter-toned halo, washing the whole room with warmth.  
  
"I wanna see the sun," Chanyeol blurted out, mesmerised and not thinking of the implications of such a statement.  
  
"It'll be possible, Chanyeol."  
  
"I don't know... if it means leaving the people to the hands of the Clergy, I'm not sure I want to go."  
  
"You're not bailing, are you?" Baekhyun scrambled up to his feet, suddenly looking all tense.  
  
Chanyeol sat up, staring off in the distance. "If we're not saving them, I'm staying. You can go if you want, but I won't."  
  
"Chanyeol, our future isn't here! There's literally _nothing_ that can save us all!"  
  
"There is! Seulgi said so."  
  
"Well, I'm not jeopardising our whole plan on terrible odds. These people are not worth it!"  
  
"That's where you're wrong," Chanyeol said, standing up and using his height to his advantage, for once. "There's nothing stronger than their faith."  
  
Baekhyun threw his arms in the air, "It's _fake_! There's nothing real about their faith."  
  
"You don't know that," Chanyeol argued. "You can't fake something like that to this point. When I saw the footage of the gas vent room, it clicked. The people are being used against their will, and I can’t leave them without knowing what they actually think when they’re themselves and not under the influence of any gas or drug."  
  
"They're corrupt, is all they are," Baekhyun spat. "They're casualties to a grander plan."  
  
"And what's that plan? Saving you and your friends' asses?" Chanyeol yelled. "Well, I'm not letting them down. Count me out," he added, walking away.  
  
"Are you at least helping us close the gas vents?"  
  
"Sure, that I can do."  
  
"I'll see you in five days, then."  
  
Chanyeol nodded, not caring whether Baekhyun had seen him or not, and went out of the room.  
  
\--  


 

**-IV-**

  
  
  
Luckily for Chanyeol, the next five days proved busy enough that he did not have time to think about Baekhyun and their argument too much. He was fully ready to leave base when the gas vents were shut once and for all.  
  
He was training with Minseok again for the better part of daytime, and the rest of it was spent in the conference room to prepare for the break-in. Baekhyun remained distant -- he stayed cooped up in his office with Seulgi or by himself. He made a point of never crossing Chanyeol's gaze whenever they were in the same room at the same time and had his meals on separate schedules.  
  
Everyone seemed on edge, easily irritated and tense. It was understandable -- they had been preparing their master plan for longer than Chanyeol had been with them, and its paroxysm was close. In addition to that, there was no guarantee that the plan would actually work, and if it were to fail, there would be no other choice than to sit and wait for a whole people's extinction. Which was possible to do when you were drugged out of your wits, but probably a lot more complicated to contemplate when in full possession of the understanding of your situation.  
  
In other words, they were not _allowed_ to fail. Chanyeol was ready to help them out as far as the closing of the gas vents was concerned, and then he would embrace his fate and come out to the people as a phoney god and see how he would be received. They had been the reason why he had spent most of his life in the comfort and safety of the Temple's walls, willingly or not, and he was at the very least indebted to them for it. He would give up his life for them in return, if necessary. But first, he needed them to be aware of the situation and decide for themselves which side they wanted to be on -- and if they decided to stand against him, Chanyeol was resigned to accept it.  
  
\--  
  
"Did you and Baekhyun have a fight?" Minseok asked one day as they were taking a break from shooting targets.  
  
"Is it that obvious?"  
  
"Well, one day you're staring at each other in an almost disturbing way to anyone else in the same room, and the next you're avoiding one another like a plague. So yeah, it's _that_ obvious."  
  
"We did fight. But we came to an agreement."  
  
"Good," Minseok said calmly, wiping his laser gun clean meticulously. "You're not planning on letting us down, are you?"  
  
"I'm seriously offended that you could think that."  
  
"Well, that's nice to see where your loyalty stands. I've never really doubted that. You're a good person, you know that?"  
  
"I try," Chanyeol said, looking away at the ruined targets in the distance. He was getting better at shooting. "But it's not always easy to be the good one."  
  
"Then you can understand someone who's a little less good than you are."  
  
"What are you talking about?"  
  
"It's a matter of perspective, I think."  
  
Chanyeol frowned. He felt stupid all of a sudden, taken back to the days when people would not tell him the truth, or cropped parts of it, or just blatant lies. He was annoyed, but kept from showing anything of it. Instead, he grabbed the laser gun off of its stand and cut short any chance at a lingering conversation by starting to shoot again.  
  
\--  
  
The day of the break-in came faster than Chanyeol had imagined. He thought that he was prepared, but on the morning of their mission, he felt sick to his stomach and above all afraid of what was to come. He was fully aware that their plan could be a complete failure and that it was more dangerous than the last infiltration in more ways than one. One or more of them could die.  
  
Chanyeol did not want to die without having made up with Baekhyun beforehand.  
  
That was why he got out of bed earlier than everyone else and rushed to Baekhyun's office. He knew Baekhyun had probably been spending his nights in there as well, getting short hours of sleep on the sofa in-between planning sessions.  
  
"What do you want?" Baekhyun asked without even sparing a glance at Chanyeol when he came in.  
  
"I want to apologise." That got Baekhyun's attention. He put down his holo-tab on the desk gingerly and looked at Chanyeol. "I've been treating you unjustly. I know you've been working on this plan for a long time and I had no right to demean it like I did. I'm sorry, Baekhyun."  
  
Baekhyun studied him for a moment, face unreadable, then his expression softened slightly and his shoulders slackened.  
  
"Apology accepted," Baekhyun smiled up at him ruefully. "I understand your point of view and I respect it. Still, you know there's a place with us on the ship if you ever change your mind, right?"  
  
Chanyeol nodded. "Yeah, thanks."  
  
Chanyeol smiled too, equally saddened by the situation. Before the silence between them became heavy and uncomfortable, Baekhyun stood up from his wheelie chair and pushed it under the desk. "Let's get ready, shall we? We've got some massive detox campaign to start."  
  
\--  
  
Unlike the security tower, the Clergy-run labs were located on the opposite side of the city. They were hidden in remote warehouses with three tall chimneys surrounded by overused cereal crops. Corn used to grow there, but the soil was now intoxicated with chemical waste due to the overpopulation, and improper to host a plantation.  
  
They arrived on board of reinforced hovering vans like the one that they had used on the day of Chanyeol's abduction. This time, the team was a bigger group. It was not infiltration per se -- they did not have time for finesse. They would have to neutralise the Guards and keep the personnel hostage while another team would accompany Seulgi to the control room.  
  
What they did not expect, though, was the welcoming committee. They had entered the enclosure by swiping the red digicard to avoid raising suspicion by setting off the alarms. They had ridden the vans up to the entrance of the labs but as soon as they had set foot on solid ground, they were assaulted by a large Guard corps who started firing at them on sight. One of the rebel soldiers was shot in the arm but everyone else managed to go back inside the armoured vans without any more damage.  
  
Chanyeol lowered his door glass as little as possible and started shooting at guards from his vantage point. One of them fell down but they soon raised a wave-shield that stopped all the laser beams.  
  
"Shit!" Minseok cursed. "How the hell--? How did they know we were coming?"  
  
Baekhyun did not answer. Instead, he handed Chanyeol, Minseok and other men heavier-looking metal guns. "These are firearms. Use them just like laser guns. The only difference is recoil, be careful."  
  
He gave them ammunition and aimed at the Guards. He shot -- the bullet went through the field as if it was going through water and it hit one of the men in the chest. He fell down, knocked out or even dead. They used the surprise to their advantage and tried to neutralise as many Guards as possible while hiding from the laser beams fired in their direction.  
  
They took down two more men, and after that, the Guards retreated inside the building dragging the fallen soldiers with them, understanding that the wave-shield would not be efficient against real bullets.  
  
Once the way was cleared, they left the vans a second time. The injured soldier stayed inside with a doctor and Yixing. The latter was supposed to coordinate the team that was outside watching and the operating team.  
  
They synchronised their holo-watches and entered the building. Like for the mission at the security tower, they had gotten the holographic maps of the labs through Seulgi's contacts at the Clergy headquarters. Consequently, Chanyeol knew that they had to cross two airlocks and a large, open storage room before reaching the labs. This would be no easy feat, considering that the Guards were already aware of their presence and onto them.  
  
They did not cross the path of any Guard until they were facing the first airlock. Two lines of heavily armed soldiers were waiting for them behind the thick steel of the doors, according to the temperature sensor that Baekhyun had pulled down on his eyes. They were about twenty of them, against eight.  
  
"In formation! Raise your shields!" Baekhyun ordered. They complied immediately and waited.  
  
The Guards had probably detected their presence too, because they opened the doors and emerged one by one, vests on and shields up, ready to fire at them. Chanyeol, Baekhyun and their team walked backwards, closing in on Seulgi whom they had to protect at all costs, laser guns turned towards the Guards and ready to shoot, too. It seemed as if each team was waiting for the other to fire.  
  
Baekhyun was on the first line. He turned to Chanyeol and nodded at the team behind him. All of them lifted filtering masks above their noses and mouths. Chanyeol knew what to do -- he hooked his thumb in a grenade pin and took it off of his belt carefully and silently. He was crouching at the back of the group, partially hidden by the seven others. Without waiting any longer, Chanyeol stood up abruptly and threw the grenade at the Guards. A thick cloud of gas was released from it into the air, and everything rapidly turned into chaos. Guards started firing randomly in the general direction of Baekhyun's team. Chanyeol and the others used the confusion to push forward, preferring hand-to-hand combat to shooting when visibility was as reduced as it was. Chanyeol managed to knock out two Guards before reaching the airlock doors. They had been closed again but it was probably better that way -- the Guards would not use it as temporary shelter.  
  
The gas started to dissipate and Chanyeol could see about five yards ahead. In the mess, he spotted Baekhyun, Minseok and Seulgi. All of them seemed uninjured but they were still grappling with the Guards. Chanyeol himself was fighting one, but he was significantly weaker than him, so it took mere seconds to neutralise him. Once he was done, he glanced up again to see if any of his teammates needed backup and saw a Guard creep up behind Baekhyun, who was busy keeping two Guards at bay at the same time. If Chanyeol did not do anything, Baekhyun would probably die.  
  
Instead of calling out for him, he took his laser gun off of his holster and, without thinking much, shot at the Guard's face. The laser beam hit its target square on and the Guard fell down on the spot.  
  
Everything seemed to slow down around Chanyeol. A sudden white-grey edge started to form around his vision, as if they were manoeuvring through thick cotton -- muted like the gears of an idle engine.  
  
Chanyeol had just killed somebody. He swallowed thickly when the acidic taste of bile rose up his throat, and it somehow shook him out of the shocking daze of realisation. He could not ponder over this now, there were more important matters. He could not let his friends down now that they were that far into the mission.  
  
"Man down!" Baekhyun yelled.  
  
Realising that all the Guards were either dead or unconscious, Chanyeol rushed to them, careful not to step on anybody on his way. Minseok was lying on his side, his left flank covered in blood. Baekhyun was pressing on his wound to cut the blood flow. He looked at Baekhyun's eyes, trying to convey his interrogation without uttering it out loud.  
  
"You're gonna be okay," Baekhyun said, nodding. "Take him to the medic in the van, we'll pick up from here."  
  
One of the men replaced Baekhyun's pressure on Minseok's middle and with the help from another, they carried him away. They were now just the five of them, including Seulgi who was not exactly trained to combat.  
  
"We need to move on," Baekhyun said, walking up to the doors and swiping the digicard. They all entered the airlock, the doors closed again and shower heads emerged from the walls. The atmosphere was sanitised with steam and some kind of gas before the opposite doors were open. They led to a large hall where all kinds of crates were stacked haphazardly. They were exposed, but also virtually alone. They easily spotted the doors to the next airlock in the opposite wall about two hundred yards from their current position. Everything about this big, nearly empty room screamed trap, but Baekhyun, Seulgi and the others had probably come to the same conclusion by themselves.  
  
"Let's run along the east wall," Baekhyun said. Chanyeol looked at it -- it was the way least blocked by crates and boxes. They did as they were told and followed each other in line, with Seulgi in the middle. Strangely enough, they reached the doors without a hitch. Chanyeol did not like it, somehow, fearing that the worst was to come.  
  
The second airlock was noticeably different. There were no shower heads or jets of steam, but they felt the pressure change as if they were travelling up on a very fast lift. Chanyeol swallowed several times to help his eardrums adjust.  
  
"Don't shoot anybody or anything once in the vent room," Baekhyun said. "Who knows what a bullet or a laser beam could do near very large amounts of volatile gas." That was a reasonable idea, so Chanyeol put his gun away and lifted his shield up, waiting for the second pair of doors to open.  
  
When they entered the gas vent room, they were surprised not to find any Guard waiting for them. The employees were predictably aware of the break-in, because all of them were reunited around the computers. Two of them were typing with urgency, probably trying to block access to data and commands at the last minute.  
  
Baekhyun took out his laser gun and pointed it at the woman who was visibly in charge, judging by her slightly different clothes and the red digicard dangling from her chest pocket. "Everybody step back from the holo-comps or I won't hesitate to shoot her and every remaining one of you if you don't obey or do anything brash," he stated in a cold, detached tone.  
  
"Oh, and I almost forgot," Baekhyun added. "No need to set off the alarm. The Guards are all dead. And you'll be too if you even think of trying."  
  
Baekhyun's intimidating little speech seemed to have had the expected effect -- all the employees backed off from the line of holo-comps and were led by Baekhyun against the opposite wall, where they were ordered to stand with their hands on their heads. Chanyeol escorted Seulgi to the computers. She sat and started typing immediately.  
  
"They were trying to set up extra security," she said. "One more minute and I wouldn't have been able to break through it."  
  
"Thank goodness," Chanyeol sighed with relief. "How long do you think it's gonna take?"  
  
"I should be done in less than ten minutes," she said, focused on the lines of code she was scrolling through with astonishing speed.  
  
Chanyeol waited next to her anxiously, glancing between Baekhyun and the hostages, the doors and Seulgi's work alternatively. "Okay, I've just closed the vents," she said, more to herself as encouragement than to anyone else. She took a stick out of her pocket and inserted it into the computer. "I'm installing a trojan into their system so that when they try to uninstall the programme I set up to close the vents, they'll open my custom software and it'll allow me to be the only one to control the opening and closing of the vents from our base. And then, I'll set them to remain closed at all times." She typed something very quickly, read over the code that she had so expertly modified before pulling the stick out of the slot with a flourish. "Done!" she said with a smile.  
  
"You're a genius," Chanyeol grinned back at her.  
  
"Say that to Jongdae when we're back. He'll be so mad."  
  
The team took some extra time to tie the employees to pipes protruding from the walls with magnetic restraints and they walked out of the vent room.  
  
The way back to the exit was easier, which was understandable, considering that the Guards had been stopped. But there was no way that their 'friendly' welcoming committee was the only security deployed after them. Chanyeol had lived in the Temple for long enough to know better, and so should Baekhyun who had also been undercover for several weeks.  
  
Thus, it was no surprise when, on their way to the hovering vans, they were ambushed by two groups of Guards.  
  
"Everybody run to the vans! Don't look back!" Baekhyun shouted.  
  
A part of the team members made it to the first van, which took off and left immediately. Chanyeol was reassured when he saw that both Minseok and Yixing were in that van and that they could go back to base without harm.  
  
After making sure that the rest of the team had entered the second van, Chanyeol deliberately looked around to check that he was the last one to enter the vehicle. All of them were safe -- all of them except Baekhyun.  
  
"Go!" he screamed as he was dragged back to the entrance of the labs, captured by three Guards whose grip he was struggling to escape from.  
  
"BAEKHYUN!" Chanyeol shouted and jumped out of the van before running to try and save him.  
  
"Go before they stop the van!" Baekhyun yelled at him.  
  
"No way!"  
  
Chanyeol's race was cut short by someone tackling him to the gravelly ground. He felt the skin of his left cheek tear open with the impact. He was grabbed by two members of his own team who maintained him in the cage of their arms as he struggled and screamed to be released. They hauled him up inside the van, and the last image he saw before the door was closed in his face was that of Baekhyun being pummelled by at least four Guards.  
  
"LET GO! We can't leave him! WE CAN'T!"  
  
Someone put a gentle and warm hand on his uninjured cheek. "We'll go back for him," Seulgi murmured into Chanyeol's ear. "He's tough, he'll live. And we'll save him."  
  
\--  


 

**-V-**

  
  
  
When they came back to base, Minseok (who did not look wounded anymore, for some unfathomable reason), Jongdae and Sehun led them to the conference room for an emergency meeting. Chanyeol followed them numbly, the image of Baekhyun being taken away by the enemy still etched at the front of his memory. As soon as he took place in one of the seats around the large table, Kyungsoo was onto him, tending to the minor cut on his face. He did not even feel the sting of the antiseptic ointment Kyungsoo slathered on him or the bandage after that.  
  
Chanyeol had not been listening to anything that had been said for the first ten minutes of the meeting, for he was staring off at space behind the windows and thinking of a way to go get Baekhyun with minimum damage.  
  
"I have to go back to the Temple," Chanyeol said suddenly, rising up from his chair and slapping the table with his hands, making Jongdae jump next to him.  
  
"We can't be reckless now, Chanyeol," Minseok started off. "We need a plan."  
  
"I have one," Chanyeol answered, looking straight at Minseok and then at everyone else sitting around the table. "I'm going back. As their lord."  
  
He heard several gasps, and saw Seulgi put her hand on her own mouth, eyes wide with shock.  
  
"This is suicide, they'll kill you on the spot!"  
  
"No, they won't. Not if I go there in public. The people will back me up and I'll surrender. They'll release Baekhyun against me. You can't leave without your leader."  
  
"But... what about you?" Seulgi asked, looking worried and on the verge of tearing up.  
  
"Don't worry about me. I've got the people with me. I'm not alone."  
  
"How can you be so sure they won't turn up against you?"  
  
Chanyeol took a deep breath, and for the first time, he was certain about his end of the bargain. "I trust them."  
  
\--  
  
That night, expectedly, Chanyeol could not find sleep, worry eating at his guts. He was contemplating swimming laps, but he decided against it, not wanting to run into anybody and get into an argument. They were all against his idea, but they had yet to find a better one, so they had to accept it for lack of anything less rash. He did not want to fight, knowing full well that _nothing_ was strong enough to let him be talked out of it. He was determined. Sad and resigned to his fate, but determined in an unprecedented way.  
  
Slightly before curfew, someone knocked on Chanyeol's door. He groaned something along the lines of 'come in', hoping the person behind the door would hear him.  
  
"You okay?" Seulgi asked when she stepped in and closed the door behind her silently. She sat down on the edge of Chanyeol's bed and Chanyeol sat up, propping himself up with pillows against the headboard.  
  
"I guess," he answered noncommittally. "I can't help wondering what they're doing to Baekhyun."  
  
"They're not torturing him, if you want to know."  
  
"How can you know?" Chanyeol asked, scepticism too strong not to be heard in his tone.  
  
"I have access to the Temple's video surveillance. He was transferred there."  
  
Chanyeol knelt up and grabbed Seulgi by the shoulders. He stopped himself seconds away from shaking her, "And you did not deem it important enough to tell me?" he said, on the verge of shouting at her.  
  
"Chanyeol, calm down, please. I've just managed to hack into their data thanks to the trojan programme. You're the first person I tell."  
  
"How is he? Is he alright?"  
  
"He's _fine_. I can even show you if you want... but it's not the reason why I'm here."  
  
Mildly reassured, Chanyeol studied her face. She was worrying at her lower lip, clearly withholding information, if Chanyeol did not know better.  
  
"What is it?"  
  
"I'm... I'm not supposed to tell you but-- given the situation, I guess--"  
  
"Seulgi!"  
  
"Yeah, okay, okay. Just... lower your voice, will you?" Chanyeol nodded hurriedly, urging her to go on. "Have you ever wondered why Guards were waiting for you at the labs earlier?"  
  
"Of course I have! They weren't supposed to know we'd come, what about that?"  
  
"Well-- they know because...they tracked me and found exchanges of messages. They knew we would be there."  
  
"Who did you write to? Your contacts from the Temple? Are you telling me there's a mole among them?" Chanyeol asked, alarmed beyond reason.  
  
"No! No... I--I was writing to Earth." She paused, letting her revelation sink in.  
  
Earth. Chanyeol peered at Seulgi's face. So it was possible to contact Earth? Chanyeol had been told that any contact had been stopped decades ago and that Earth would no longer respond. But then again, everything that Chanyeol had been told before his kidnapping was doubtful, to say the least. A bubble of hope burst in his heart, spreading heat throughout his chest and making him warm and tingly all the way up to his fingertips.  
  
"Earth..." he repeated, amazed.  
  
"Yeah. We're still emailing, but all our messages are encrypted now, so it takes longer. But the Clergy won't be able to spy on us anymore."  
  
"That's--that's excellent news."  
  
"Chanyeol, look. He told me not to tell you about this but...things have changed. Baekhyun was the one who told me to contact Earth," she said, and Chanyeol looked at her incredulously. "Yeah, he was. And when I was successful, he told me to explain the situation to them. And guess what? They did not know anything about life here! They said that contact had been broken with the Clergy years ago, and that they continued sending supplies but did not get any replies apart from empty ships sent back to them so they only stopped about two months ago!"  
  
"What?" Chanyeol frowned, taking his head into his hands and trying to comprehend the absurdity of the situation. So the Clergy and its great 'cult' had been feeding off of Earth's supplies for years without sharing or telling anybody, leaving the people on their own, working dried-out soils and living in a filthy, drug-laced atmosphere when they could have at least lived off of the donations from Earth and at most left the station on board of one of the many cargo ships going to and fro between Earth and TSS-056. Chanyeol was so disgusted that he almost felt sick to his stomach. A familiar sensation of constricted chest took him by surprise, leaving him weak and dizzy. He lied down onto his side next to Seulgi, feeling the room sway around him just like when he was still under multiple drugs. His breathing was ragged and whizzing in his throat.  
  
He felt Seulgi's cool and soft hand on his forehead. "I know it's a lot to take in. But there's hope," she went on, caressing Chanyeol's fringe gently, so that his heartbeat slowed down progressively, becoming normal again. "Baekhyun told me to ask Earth to send enough ships to allow the people to leave Sacred Fire. I'm still waiting for their reply but... Chanyeol, there's a chance that your wish is going to come true!" There was a slight tremor to her voice when she uttered those last words.  
  
"We need to save him," Chanyeol stated, eyes closed. "I want him to be the witness of the plan he worked so hard for going way beyond his expectations."  
  
"You love him, don't you?"  
  
The warmth inside Chanyeol burnt brighter all of a sudden. He felt calm, at peace, not expecting such an epiphany to take the form of a state of tranquillity and serenity unlike anything he had ever been in before.  
  
In place of an answer, eyes still shut, he smiled up at Seulgi, content under the touch of her fingers, and let himself drift away into deep slumber.  
  
\--  
Thanks to Seulgi, Chanyeol was able to get news from Baekhyun's well-being every day. He was treated like any other prisoner but Chanyeol was relieved that he did not receive a beating-up like he had on the day he was captured.  
  
The rest of the time, Chanyeol was busy planning the people and Baekhyun's rescue. Both would have to be done on the same day. They had one shot at this, so they could not throw away any chance. It was naturally that Chanyeol took the lead of operations. His determination had rubbed off on the other rebels and the brainstorming was going rather smoothly -- if too slowly to Chanyeol's taste -- with everyone throwing in their ideas until the rescue mission plan was perfectly well-oiled.  
  
\--  
  
Even though they could not be more ready than they were, the odds were still not in their favour.  
  
To top it all off, on the day they had decided to start the rescue mission, violent riots -- rougher than the previous ones -- broke out in the City. The effects of the gas wearing off were probably directly linked to the people's reaction. Chanyeol deemed it appropriate to act now more than ever.  
  
Seulgi had dyed his hair back to its natural bright red, and had brought him the washed and repaired official godly robes he had been wearing on the day of his abduction. When he thought back to that day, it seemed to him that it was ages ago, when he was just a tool to serve the High Priestess' evil designs. His outfit made him feel powerful in a way it had never before. He knew that day was his real chance to make a difference, to change the world to a better one and to give back to his people everything that they had given him in the past -- from their love, their trust, to their lives.  
  
On the van ride towards Temple Square, instead of sensing his fear grow, Chanyeol felt his determination and anger rise to give him the strength he would need. Seulgi was also in the van with him -- she would not leave it like he would, because she needed to coordinate the technological part of the plan.  
  
When they reached the edge of the square, they could hear the roar of the crowd from the medium altitude they were flying at. The Temps were visibly very angry, they were throwing bricks and rocks at the Temple's walls and through giant holograms of Chanyeol dating back to older times and no longer fooling anybody.  
  
The van flew over the crowd, high enough that it did no risk being hit by rogue projectiles. Once it was securely stopped right in the middle of the square so that everybody could see it, Chanyeol set the gravitation mode on. He could still hear the crowd screaming insults at their fake god's image and at the van that was coming to disturb their demonstration.  
  
Chanyeol took a deep breath and opened the side sliding door. Just before he went out, Seulgi stopped him, "I trust you," she said gravely before kissing his cheek. "Now, blow their mind and that wall!" she added, grinning.  
  
Chanyeol nodded and chanced a glance out of the van. He grabbed onto the roof and hauled himself up on it. He stood on it, finding his balance, and waited for the camera drones to fly around him. Seulgi had hacked into the app programme controlling them and was filming him, broadcasting the video live on every Clergy-run hologram and video display in the city. The red dots on the drones flashed red, and that was Chanyeol's cue to start speaking.  
  
"Dear people of Temporary Space Station 056, good morning," people shouted even louder, fierce and savage in their words. "You know me as Fire Lord. Well, my name is Chanyeol and I'm not a god." The surprise effect lasted just long enough for Chanyeol to keep on talking, telling the people exactly what had happened before and after his kidnapping, how the Clergy had been drugging them and lying to them, how Earth was not aware of the High Priestess' actions, how a group of rebels had risked their lives multiple times to give them a chance to have an alternate destiny.  
  
"This is why, dear people of TSS-056, you are now allowed to choose your fate, and are invited to go to any of the four spaceports of the station where ships are waiting for you and our teams have cleared a way out of this floating prison!"  
  
The crowd erupted in incredulous shouts, claiming that they were being lied to again. Chanyeol had seen that coming. "Look for yourselves," he yelled and pointed at the immense hologram hovering over the square and behind it, at the giant screen displayed on the largest Temple wall. Seulgi played footages of the surveillance she had stolen from the Clergy security tower, and let it roll on with several hours’ worth of film.  
  
Below him, Chanyeol could see the people start to grow agitated again after the initial state of shock of seeing their fallacious god in the flesh dismantling all that they had ever believed in in a matter of a few words.  
  
The Militia had surrounded the square in the meantime, trying to reign in the crowd, but to no avail. The people were roaring with wrath, quickly crushing officers under their incredibly higher number. The authorities started to retreat until they reached the Temple's main gates. They were backed up against them and could not open them, for fear of leaving the enraged people inside. In short, they were trapped.  
  
A wave of people crashed upon the weak line of Militia officers and the huge doors. They did not budge, for the moment, but Chanyeol did not doubt that they would if they continued giving them that treatment. Proudly, Chanyeol left the people do what they had been waiting to do for generations and prepared to tend to equally urgent matters.  
  
He undid his outer robe and got rid of it, now only wearing the white suit he had been given when he still thought he was deity. It was more comfortable and easy to move in, and he was about to need his mobility. He secured his grip on the handle of his laser gun, turned the cannon to maximum diameter beam and aimed at the Temple's wall. Without one second’s hesitation, he fired at it, blowing it up easily and leaving a huge hole in it. The van flew over to the ruined facade and as soon as Chanyeol was close enough to it, he hopped off of the van and into the hole. He waved goodbye to Seulgi and she flew off towards one of the spaceports where she was awaited.  
  
His calculations had been right -- he was in the Inner Gardens. He knew it was very unlikely that someone would be in there. He was not surprised to see beds upon beds of dead flowers around him. No one cared about them except for him. He had the sudden urge to scream but he refrained from doing so and instead ran through the abandoned Gardens.  
  
He reached familiar corridors and rushed along them with a very precise goal in mind. It was not long before his path crossed that of heavily armed Guards. He stopped in front of them and lifted his gun.  
  
"You probably know I won't hesitate to kill any of you, don't you? Now you'll respond to _me_ only, because _I_ am your leader and you'll take me to the High Priestess right this moment."  
  
Chanyeol did not know if it was thanks to his persuasion skills, fear or just pure hatred for the High Priestess, but the Guards obeyed immediately by lowering their weapons and led the way to the higher levels of the Temple where Chanyeol knew her quarters were located. The Guards stopped in front of the doors leading to the entire wing she had claimed as hers and left the premises without further ado.  
  
Chanyeol still had the red digicard and swiped it. Unexpectedly enough, it worked. Chanyeol had never been in the High Priestess' quarters before, but he had studied the holographic map that Seulgi had found in the data. He decided not to check the bedroom, assuming that she would not be sleeping at this time. He rushed through a conference hall and barged into the office where, sure enough, the High Priestess was sitting at her desk.  
  
"Well, hello, _Chanyeol_ ," she said, looking him dead in the eye, his name sounding like a challenge coming from her.  
  
Her long, sleek and shiny black hair was not covered by the official headdress, and she looked small and weak. Which she was far from being, as Chanyeol knew better than anyone. And to think that he once almost considered her a mother, Chanyeol was appalled and disgusted.  
  
"So," she said as she stood up and rounded her desk to walk up to Chanyeol, "I heard you found a noble cause to fight for," she scoffed haughtily.  
  
"More noble than serving your selfish benefits," he retorted, gaze not wavering.  
  
"What a shame," she sighed exaggeratedly. "We could have done such great things together."  
  
"Like what? Making you richer while watching the people starve to their deaths?"  
  
"You're being so _dramatic_ , Chanyeol. I was so close to my goal. Then your stupid new _little friends_ had to go and throw it all away!"  
  
"What are you talking about?" Chanyeol asked, taken aback.  
  
"One week, maybe two more, and the ship would have been ready to take me away from this filthy station!"  
  
"You're not leaving anytime soon, you bitch!"  
  
"Oh, Chanyeol, watch your language!"  
  
Chanyeol's hand was itching to grab his gun, but he knew it would be a terrible mistake. The High Priestess had more under her sleeve than she let on.  
  
Chanyeol chose the option to sit down in one of the chairs in front of the desk she was leaning back onto. He did his best to adopt a non-aggressive stance.  
  
"Remember when you told me the colour red made you think of power? Well, now I understand. That's all you've ever been after, enslaving people under your orders just to let them down in the end, like the evil, selfish person you truly are." Chanyeol kept studying the Priestess' face, looking for the slightest sign of emotion but either she had none, or she was still as good as ever at concealing anything her expression could reveal. Her eyes were the icy cold black beads they had always been. "Red is warmth, friendship and _love_ ," Chanyeol continued, weighing his every word. "They're called _feelings_ and apparently you're incapable of having them."  
  
"Red, little boy," she leant in, her face mere inches from Chanyeol's, "is your friend's blood!"  
  
She pushed a button on a panel embedded in the top of her desk, and the far wall of her office slid open to reveal another room separated by a large glass panel. Chanyeol jumped from his seat and ran to the window.  
  
"Baekhyun!" he yelled, looking at the still body lying on the white floor. His face was bruised and dried blood was flaking under his nose and at the corner of his mouth. Chanyeol turned to the High Priestess abruptly. "What have you done to him?"  
  
"He had what he deserved. I found out this morning that he was treated too nicely, that's why I had him sent up here so that I could teach him a lesson."  
  
Chanyeol's head spinned in a too familiar way but he clenched his fists, forbidding himself from yielding to yet another panic attack. He walked backwards and away from the glass, hand hovering above the handle of his gun.  
  
The Priestess pressed another button on her desk and the window slid open. With impressive strength, she hauled Baekhyun up. He groaned and straightened a little, too weak to resist but very much alive. Chanyeol sighed with relief. The Priestess pulled up her robes and took out a gun, placing it against Baekhyun's temple.  
  
"Chanyeol, just go," Baekhyun groaned hoarsely.  
  
"I'm not going anywhere without you!"  
  
"I don't want to interrupt your little lovers' quarrel, but _I_ for one, want to go out of here," the Priestess said, walking forward with Baekhyun's body as a human shield and jerked her head to the side. "My personal garage is that way, press that button over there," Chanyeol did, and it opened a door leading to a narrow, badly lit corridor. "Go ahead, and don't try anything funny or I’m rearranging your boyfriend's face."  
  
There was indeed a garage at the end of the corridor with a bikraft and a hovering vehicle not completely unlike Chanyeol's old lordo-craft, only bigger and probably more aerodynamic. "Take me to the nearest spaceport," she said, pushing Chanyeol inside the hovercar, still keeping Baekhyun at the end of her cannon.  
  
The ride was short but extremely tense. Chanyeol could hear the muffled sounds of the crowd rioting and taking possession of the Temple below. The gates had long been destroyed and people were flooding in, under the helpless Guards' gazes. They flew over the City in less than five minutes, but that short time was enough for Chanyeol to see to what extent his little broadcast had impacted the people. The streets were packed with people running either towards the spaceports or in the direction of the Temple. Chanyeol could see a flood people crowding the entrance of the open South spaceport, massed against the airlock doors. He spotted a free hovercar parking space on the top of one of the spaceport buildings but the High Priestess told him to land as close as he could to the massive airlocks separating them from the ships.  
  
Following the High Priestess' orders, Chanyeol stopped the hovercar on a small pedestal up a flight of stairs a little off of the crowd's path. He hopped off of the vehicle, eyeing his former mentor and Baekhyun, who looked still mostly out of it. As they were walking to join the crowd, Chanyeol heard the High Priestess and Baekhyun struggling behind him. He turned on his heels immediately, raising his gun and ready to shoot. Baekhyun looked at him, the fierce spark in his eyes fully revived. With his elbow, he gave a blow to the Priestess' stomach, surprising her into a coughing fit and managed to disentangle himself from her. He stumbled on the ground but was too close to the stairs and fell. He rolled down several steps and did not move after that.  
  
"Baekhyun!" Chanyeol shouted, running towards him.  
  
But he did not go very far. The High Priestess had fired, shooting him in the arm. He screamed in pain, forced to drop his gun and fell down to his knees. He propped himself up on his good arm and knelt up, breathing hard and struggling to focus despite the acute pain. He was right-handed, so it was no use trying to shoot the High Priestess with his left hand. However, he lifted it, palm open, and focused all his strength into the few square inches of skin from where he felt heat spread.  
  
Soon, the High Priestess was surrounded by a cylinder of fire at least twice her height and it was slowly closing in on her.  
  
"Chanyeol," Baekhyun called weakly. "Kill her!"  
  
"Baekhyun? Are you alright?"  
  
"Kill her!"  
  
"Shut up or _I'll_ kill you!" the Priestess yelled, aiming her gun at Baekhyun. It was useless, though, for the laser beam could not go past Chanyeol's special fire.  
  
"You betrayed me!" Chanyeol said. "I considered you my mentor and I looked up to you," that had the expected effect -- the High Priestess turned both her gaze and her gun to Chanyeol, effectively distracting her from Baekhyun. "The power that you knew I had and used to subjugate the people -- that same power will be the cause of your demise. You didn't think I would use it _against_ you, did you?"  
  
The ring of fire was constricting around her more closely, but Chanyeol could not resolve himself to kill her, in spite of all her lies, all the harm she had caused, and all the people who had died because of her. Chanyeol was not a murderer. The only time he had taken somebody's life, it was to save Baekhyun. Now, the only life at stake was his own, and he had no right to decide whether it was worth more or less than the High Priestess'.  
  
"You're too soft for your own good, Chanyeol!" she shouted before grabbing a firearm from a fold in her robe and aiming it at Chanyeol. Just as she cocked the gun, Chanyeol saw Baekhyun stand up in his peripheral vision. He shot the High Priestess down immediately -- the bullet went straight and clean through her head and she fell limply, dead.  
  
Chanyeol ran to Baekhyun and held him up in his arms. He punched Chanyeol on his good shoulder with the handle of his firearm. "She wasn't wrong, dumbass. You're too soft." Chanyeol chuckled, the relief washing over him stronger than pain or fear, and kissed Baekhyun through blood and grime.  
  
\--  
  
After that, Chanyeol's memories of the evacuation were partly blurry, and partly so happy that looking back on it, he had a hard time telling fantasy from reality.  
  
He recalled being dragged by a limping Baekhyun to a van where Yixing was waiting for them. He proved an even better doctor than Kyungsoo and Sehun _combined_ because for some reason, Chanyeol did not even need a bandage after Yixing's intervention. Chanyeol had become very careful with everything he was given to drink or eat, considering his history with drugs, and he was positive that he had _not_ been drugged.  
  
Then, they helped the people evacuate, trying to avoid creating a mess or huge crowds in front of the entrances. Tens of skiffs were going back and forth between a huge traveller ship and the spaceport, but the turnover was efficient enough that the whole station could be emptied in less than twelve hours thanks to the four spaceports. Volunteers among the Guards and the Militia had decided to help channel the crowd, and as a result, the population in its entirety could leave TSS-056 before the scheduled time of Night Mode.  
  
\--  
  
Finally, they went on board of the last skiff leaving the station and found the other members of their team waiting for them in a large cargo-like hall. Seulgi ran to them and hugged them both at the same time. She planted a noisy kiss on Baekhyun’s cheek and did the same to Chanyeol immediately after. The three of them chuckled stupidly, still incredulous and going through a slow recovering process.  
  
Even though neither Chanyeol nor Baekhyun were injured anymore, they simply felt like leaning on each other. Chanyeol drew energy from the warm body next to his, solid and sturdy, and so very real. He needed this kind of reassurance to ground him, to remind him constantly that he was not dreaming up their success.  
  
Jongdae came next, slapping Baekhyun across the back. “It’s a good thing we listened to this one,” he told Chanyeol, talking about Baekhyun. “When we missed the first opportunity to get you out of the Temple, he was the one who held us together so that we wouldn’t give up. We were running out of time, but he wouldn’t hear a thing as long as you weren’t with us.”  
  
Chanyeol side-eyed Baekhyun, who was punching at Jongdae’s shoulder with… embarrassment?  
  
“Ah, shut up!” he said, wincing a little.  
  
This was so far away from Baekhyun’s allegedly tough character that Chanyeol could not help but grin fondly. Baekhyun caught his eyes and rolled his, but he was very, very bad at hiding his own smile. Chanyeol could not wait for the next opportunity to take him to a more isolated place and kiss those lips.  
  
But instead, they sat down, directly on the floor, in a small circle, everyone wanting to share their version of the day and talking over each other in a joyful cacophony. Chanyeol looked at each one of them --  
  
Jongdae cackling louder than everyone else.  
  
Seulgi being a frustratingly cute smartass.  
  
Kyungsoo watching them with exasperation.  
  
Minseok showing his gummy smile and reducing everyone to silence whenever he said something.  
  
Sehun trying to school an expressionless mask but breaking it with rogue fits of laughter.  
  
Yixing nodding off -- which was surely the most sane reaction after such a tiresome day.  
  
And Baekhyun, beaming so hard that his mouth formed an endearing sort of rectangle and his eyes disappeared into two shiny crescents.  
  
Sharing this seemingly mundane moment with all of them, knowing full well that it was anything but, Chanyeol thought that it was probably what happiness felt like.  
  
\--  
  
Later, as he was sitting on a bench facing a huge window where he could see Sacred Fire's spherical form become nothing more than a tiny dot in the distance, Chanyeol turned to Baekhyun, who was sitting next to him.  
  
"Are you going to miss it?"  
  
Baekhyun sighed. "Probably a little," he answered after a long time. "But I'm sure what's ahead of us is going to make me forget I even entertained the thought I would regret it."  
  
"You're probably right."  
  
"I am." Staring off into the immensity of space, Baekhyun felt for Chanyeol's hand on the bench. They entwined their fingers. "Our lives start now."  
  
\--  


 

**EPILOGUE**

  
  
  
The traveller ship was huge and amazing, a gem of technology. Chanyeol would have spent his days roaming it endlessly, tiny part by tiny part, if Baekhyun had let him. He did, but not all the time. A very large part of his timetable was used catching up on all the sex he and Baekhyun could have had back at the base and did not because they were too busy trying to intimidate one another.  
  
The ship had wide bay windows from where they could watch the stars to their heart’s content. Chanyeol wished that the place where he would live did not hide the stars from view. Now that he was granted them, there was nothing worth enough for him to give them up again.  
  
The ship's passengers had been told that after two stopovers to get enough supplies for the trip, they would be travelling to Black Pearl, and that they would reach destination a hundred and forty years from then. They would be put into cryo-sleep pods and would wake up a week before landing. But for now, their bodies had to adjust to the new gravity of the ship, and considering that most Temps were underfed when they left the Station, they needed to recover to be put to sleep in good conditions.  
  
\--  
  
A few days after they were shipped off, Chanyeol was lounging in a small and comfortable, dimly-lit common room with Baekhyun and a few of his other friends from the base. He thought that it was the right time to ask something that he had been wondering about for a long time and was eating at him slowly but surely.  
  
"I--I never understood why you took all those risks to kidnap me."  
  
Baekhyun smirked and glanced around him before speaking, "Have you ever wondered why they needed to drug you in order for you to be obedient? They had a gas for that, didn't they?"  
  
"But you told me I was drugged more than the people."  
  
"That's not entirely true," Jongdae said. "Actually, they drugged you because you're _immune_ to the gas."  
  
"Wait-- You mean that... I'm--"  
  
"Uh-huh," Jongdae nodded. "You're from Earth. Like most of us."  
  
Chanyeol ran his hand down his face, taking in this huge piece of information that they had so carefully kept from him.  
  
"You see," Baekhyun continued, "We were taken away from Earth as babies because we had been exposed to radiations. Word went round that we had developed special 'abilities' because of the radiations. The Clergy tested us and selected you, because among all of us, you were the one with the most impressive power."  
  
"What? Are you telling me that--"  
  
"We are," Baekhyun said, waving at him, a small orb of light glowing a few inches above his open fingers.  
  
Chanyeol gaped at him. How come they had hidden their powers to him all this time?  
  
"But as awesome as they are," Jongdae added, making electricity crackle between his hands and looking at Chanyeol above a miniature lightning, "they're also a curse. They were the reason we were torn apart from our families. We're orphans with a gift."  
  
Kyungsoo turned away, probably not willing to show off his ability. Sehun smirked at Chanyeol, who was watching him with wide eyes, still not believing what he was witnessing. He blew softly in Chanyeol's direction and immediately, his hair flew in all directions, as if he were caught in a small, invisible hurricane.  
  
Just as Minseok was turning the contents of his glass of water into ice, Seulgi shrugged, grinning, "I guess I'm just a math genius," she said, turning back to her holo-tab and getting a jab from Jongdae ("Rude!").  
  
Even if Chanyeol was shocked and still trying to process everything, he thought back to several situations that had tickled his curiosity.  
  
"Yixing, don't tell me you healed me with your ability."  
  
"I did, actually. I also healed Minseok and Baekhyun."  
  
"Why didn't they pick _you_ , then?" Chanyeol blurted out, choking on an incredulous laugh.  
  
"It's less visual, probably?" he said, shaking his head.  
  
"But, where we're going, we won't have to hide anymore, will we?"  
  
"I guess we'll know when we're there," Baekhyun. "But it's more than a century away, I think we don't have to worry about this right now."  
  
Chanyeol was everything but finished with this conversation, but he accepted it graciously, for now. He would definitely not look at his friends the same way. But he guessed that it was for the better -- at least he felt so.  
  
\--  
  
One hundred and forty years later, Chanyeol wakes up. It takes him a few minutes to realise where he is, and why. He is lucky his cryo-sleep pod is close to a large window. He cannot think of anything better to wake up to. Wait, scratch that.  
  
He turns to the pod next to his and all his memories flood back at once, overwhelming him. Baekhyun has woken up, too. He sits up, looks at Chanyeol, and his eyes shine like two beautiful dark beads. Chanyeol reaches out to him and Baekhyun takes his hand. They both walk -- barefoot in their sleeping robes -- and stop in front of the large bay window.  
  
Black Pearl is in sight. It takes its name from the black earth it is covered in. From their spot, it is still just a white dot, but it already feels like home.  
  
Baekhyun reaches out to the window and places his palm on it. He turns to Chanyeol and smiles.  
  
  
When Chanyeol finds it hard to fall asleep, in his future life, he will remember this very image -- that of Baekhyun beaming at him with his new home shining bright in the background, and he will smile, too.  
  


 

**THE END**


	2. Podfic

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is now an .mp3 version of the fic that you can download via the link below.  
>   
> The audio was read out and recorded by Lucy (Luciferland), who did a wonderful job. I'm eternally grateful that she decided my fic was worth her time. You can thank her in the comment section below because I've added her as co-creator and she'll be notified whenever a new comment is posted. Please let her know you appreciated her hard work.  
>   
> The audio is split up into an intro, 5 chapters and an epilogue. I've compiled them in one .rar file (170Mo total). The whole duration of the recording is roughly 3 hours and 6 minutes.  
>   
> The following parts are NSFW for sexual content: intro and part 003.  
> All the other parts are rated for language.  
> Read at your own discretion.  
>   
> You can follow Lucy on Twitter: @Luciferland

<http://www.mediafire.com/file/3wsabl9e84x10iq/%5BPodfic%5D_Like_a_Thousand_Exploding_Suns_by_Winter__Child.rar>

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on Twitter @winter__child


End file.
